My review was written in December 1980 after a Greenwich Village screening:
"There Goes the Bride" is a lame Midatlantic filmization of the 1974 West End farce, which originally starred Bernard Cribbins and featured Trudi van Doorn on stage. Shot in 1979 at Pinewood Studios and on Vero Beach, Florida exteriors, pic lacks the sex comedy and nudity of previous Ray Cooney efforts (e.g., "Not Now, Darling") and is woefully out of step with commercial realities for feature films today. "Bride" faces very grim prospects in domestic release.
The old chestnut of wedding day problems constitutes the picture's sitcom basis. Florida parents Tom Smothers (incredibly miscast with his boyish looks in Cribbins' role) and Sylvia Syms are trying to wed daughter Toria Fuller to Texan John Terry, son of Martin Balsam and Margot Moser. Psychiatrist Phil Silvers (an embarrassing cameo) and Italian waiter Graham Stark recall the wedding day slapstick mishaps in a rickety flashback structure.
With the bride and groom roles barely pencilled in, film revolves solely around a comedy premise lifted from "Topper". Ad man Smothers, working on a brassiere campaign for magnate Jim Backus, uses a '20s-era photo of then-model Twiggy for inspiration (!). Upon bumping into doors, addle-brained Smothers imagines Twiggy has come to life again, causing sitcom humor since she is invisible to the rest of the cast. A final reel crash on the head removes Smothers' fantasy girl and the wedding comes off after all.
Unfunny script, credited to Cooney and director Terence Marcel leaves the laughs (some unintentional) for the spectacle of Smothers imagining himself as the answer to Fred Astaire (with Twiggy looking smashing in a satin gown as his Ginger Rogers-esque dancing partner. In two routine song-and-dance numbers, Smothers' sincere terping and warbling seem to be essayed in earnest rather than bumbling, and emerge as pure camp.
Despite her billing, Twiggy is saddled with a merely decorative non-role and comes off as cute and harmless. Unfortunately, all her footage is shot with fog filters for an irritating soft-focus effect, designed insipidly to cue the fans that "she's not real". Pic's few amusing moments (intended) are provided by the mugging of Syms' parents played by Geoffrey Sumner (holdover from the original play's cast and Hermione Baddeley. Various guest cameos fizzle.
The production and technical team, encoring from a previous Cooney film "Why Not Stay for Breakfast?", contributed a subpar job. Errors (Smothers' prop eyeglasses keep disappearing from his face in reverse shots) and antiquated painted backdrops for studio-shot exteriors attest to the project's microscopic budget.
The old chestnut of wedding day problems constitutes the picture's sitcom basis. Florida parents Tom Smothers (incredibly miscast with his boyish looks in Cribbins' role) and Sylvia Syms are trying to wed daughter Toria Fuller to Texan John Terry, son of Martin Balsam and Margot Moser. Psychiatrist Phil Silvers (an embarrassing cameo) and Italian waiter Graham Stark recall the wedding day slapstick mishaps in a rickety flashback structure.
With the bride and groom roles barely pencilled in, film revolves solely around a comedy premise lifted from "Topper". Ad man Smothers, working on a brassiere campaign for magnate Jim Backus, uses a '20s-era photo of then-model Twiggy for inspiration (!). Upon bumping into doors, addle-brained Smothers imagines Twiggy has come to life again, causing sitcom humor since she is invisible to the rest of the cast. A final reel crash on the head removes Smothers' fantasy girl and the wedding comes off after all.
Unfunny script, credited to Cooney and director Terence Marcel leaves the laughs (some unintentional) for the spectacle of Smothers imagining himself as the answer to Fred Astaire (with Twiggy looking smashing in a satin gown as his Ginger Rogers-esque dancing partner. In two routine song-and-dance numbers, Smothers' sincere terping and warbling seem to be essayed in earnest rather than bumbling, and emerge as pure camp.
Despite her billing, Twiggy is saddled with a merely decorative non-role and comes off as cute and harmless. Unfortunately, all her footage is shot with fog filters for an irritating soft-focus effect, designed insipidly to cue the fans that "she's not real". Pic's few amusing moments (intended) are provided by the mugging of Syms' parents played by Geoffrey Sumner (holdover from the original play's cast and Hermione Baddeley. Various guest cameos fizzle.
The production and technical team, encoring from a previous Cooney film "Why Not Stay for Breakfast?", contributed a subpar job. Errors (Smothers' prop eyeglasses keep disappearing from his face in reverse shots) and antiquated painted backdrops for studio-shot exteriors attest to the project's microscopic budget.