Oliver's father wasn't THAT terrible...!!!

I thought the same when I read the book (which I remember better than the movie itself).
I can sort of understand Oliver if he saw him that way, but really, Segal as th writer should know better than present him from Oliver's perspective only.

I guess Ebert was right. He thought the movie was actually better than the book, which he found intolerable.
Maybe Segal was influenced, as was the movie, by the "hippie" movement, which saw everyone wealthy as an Antichrist or something. (Notice how much more sympathetic the text is to Jennie's "working class" father.)

So, long story short, I agree with you. Totally.

You are right. It is a story of a young man who rejects his father because of clouded vision produced by the don't-trust-anyone-over-30 and you-can't-be-rich-and-be-honest mantras of the time. Jenny loved Ollie and wanted him to set things right with his father. To Ollie's discredit, he apparently never got the message.

You are 100% correct. Olliver the son was an insufferable ass when it came to interacting with his Father (who had given him everything.)

I don't think it was any kind of predjudace that made the senior Mr. Barret oppose the marriage, he just thought marrying while still in school woud negativly affet Olivers future.

Had he accepted the invitation to his Fathers Birthday party, I am sure the reconciliation would have begun, and Jenny would have been welcomed into the family. Had he merely told his Father at the office, that she was sick, Mr. Barret would have probably driven directly to the hospital, and did whatever he could to help. (As he did in the final scence.)

Oliver IV in his youthful foolishness, never gave his Father a chance.

I agree, OP. Another scene to bolster your point was just mentioned; the one in which Jenny calls to RSVP (Yes) to the father's birthday party and Oliver wrestles the phone away from her.

Back then, the generations involved had grown up in very different times. Good point about gold diggers; when Oliver III was his son's age, most women didn't work, and this was really more of an issue.

This was the trend at the time in big movies in this era.
To show the younger generation against the older one and rebellion and being against the establishment with an Us vs Them mentality.

All his father asked was to not rush the marriage, but wait a couple of years, for if their love is true, it will not fade away anyway. It wasn't an out of this world unreasonable request.

Of course he wasn't terrible. The movie makes it perfectly clear that there was nothing all that bad about him and that Oliver was overreacting to everything he said and did. That scene when they're in the car and Jenny says something like, "Don't you have a sense of humor," is there to show audiences that Oliver was blowing everything that he said and did out of proportion.

He wasn't the kindest dad to be sure, but Oliver was a real jackass. I'm watching it on TCM tonight and am noticing more and more of Oliver's hypocrisies. I never much liked his hotheaded bravado, which seemed designed to dispel the image of a wealthy pretty boy. He whines constantly of having his family name looming over him. And what does he choose to drive? A bad-ass working class muscle car? Nah. He motors around in an antique automobile that only an aristocrat would own. Another scene that bugged me was when he went begging to the Harvard dean for a scholarship. The dean rightly pointed out that there are much more needy students, and Oliver responds with something like "What's more needy than complete destitution?" What idiotic arrogance. He had the choice of making amends with his father and inheriting millions upon millions. The truly destitute don't have that choice. When it came down to it, I didn't find one likable thing about him except his allegiance to Jenny. At the very least he wasn't a John Edwards sort of guy, running around with other women while his wife dies of cancer.