Movies I Love, Part III: “The In-Laws”
Frankly I love everything about The In-Laws. (Do not be confused. I am most certainly talking about the 1979 original, not the deplorable, unnecessary, heretical remake of a year of so ago.) It is among a handful of my favorite flicks of all time.
As much as anything I love the hook behind the film. Alan Arkin and Peter Falk were/ are major buddies They simply wanted to make a movie where the premise would be that Falk annoys Arkin all the time. From that idea the cockamamie plot evolved.
Falk is Vince Ricardo, a renegade, appreciably off kilter CIA operative. He was, he says, part of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Arkin is Sheldon Kornpett, a nebbish New York city dentist. Falk’s son is to marry Arkin’s daughter. They meet for the first time a couple of days before the wedding. Falk shows up at Arkin’s office and asks him a small favor. At which point the movie flies.
It would be far too revelatory to share much of the plot. Suffice it to say, the duo end up before a firing squad in a South American banana republic, whose dictator, General Garcia, played with genius by Richard Libertini, has a penchant for velvet paintings and Senor Wences.
It is a comedy. Then again, you probably figured that out.
This is a movie that will change whatever you might previously have thought about airline safety, tse tse flies, and your company’s benefits package. You will know a new meaning for the word “serpentine,” which will forever and always make you think of this movie.
The film is directed by the eminent Arthur Hiller. The screenplay is by Andrew Bergman, who also was involved in writing a little comedy you might have heard of called Blazing Saddles. Though I’m sure there was significant ad libbing along the way.
I really can’t carry on about this movie. It would bore you. Suffice it to say that Arkin and Falk are masters of the comedic. Here they are in top form. This is, simply stated, as funny a film as may have ever been put to celluloid. Don’t believe me? Go read the User Comments at IMDb.com.
This film will make you laugh. A lot. Can there be a higher calling?
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Well, it would seem again we agree! This is one of the two or three movies that have actually made made me roll on the floor in fits of laughter! Until I viewed this movie I did not think it possible to laugh so hard and to the point at which the laughing turns to crying, but I was wrong. My rib cage ached the next am! I wathed this movie in my mother’s family room, along with my mother. We were quite the sight!,two grown adults literally laying on the floor laugfing so hard we probably missed a good bit of the comedic genius that was poured into this gem. My mother passed away a few years after our viewing of the movie. But every subsequent screening of The In Laws takes me back to that evening with my mother and I can again shed those tears of joy! Thanks for the memories!