Metacritic reviews

One of the best comedies MGM made in the 1950s. Although Taylor perfectly embodies an idealized vision of the demure but spirited young bride, this fine film is foremost a showcase for the supple comic drollery of Spencer Tracy.

One of the finest, funniest and most civilized of all Hollywood domestic comedies. [01 Sep 2006, p.C5]

The scenes between Taylor and Spencer Tracy are sweet and utterly lacking in artifice, and although the movie asks little more than her presence, she provides it with simple, natural grace.

The film, while it packs all the satire of our modern tribal matrimonial rite that was richly contained in the original, also possesses all the warmth and poignancy and understanding that makes the Streeter treatise much beloved.

Thoroughly enchanting comedy.

What gives this slender movie its appeal is how Minnelli and writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett check out all the huge and tiny steps in the complicated process with such gleeful, and usually wry, detail. [23 Jul 1992, p.13]

Within its own terms the picture is sensitive and very well done, but it's also tiresomely fraudulent -- an idealization of a safe, shuttered existence, the good life according to M-G-M.

Minnelli could have timed many of the scenes so that laughs would not have stepped on dialog tag lines. Also he permits the wedding rehearsal sequence to play too long, lessening the comedic effect.

One of the bleakest films of a bleak decade.