The In-Laws (1979) - The Mini-Review

This is one of the movies on my list that I knew the least about before going in. I did know it existed and who the main actors were, but that's about it. As it turns out, that was just fine. I had no idea where I was going in this movie and that's refreshing.

The In-Laws starts out with a well orchestrated heist of an armored car, something I did not expect from a comedy. After deftly making off with not money, but plates for the printing of U.S. Treasury bills, the crooks meet with one of the main characters, Vince Ricardo (Peter Faulk.) He is the man behind the heist, apparently our main character is a thief. There's not much time for him to celebrate however, since his son is getting married in few days and he needs to be off to meet the new in-laws. Enter our other main character, Sheldon Kornpett (Alan Arkin.) He is a successful, yet high strung New York dentist. At dinner things seem just a little bit off to Sheldon, his daughter's soon to be father-in-law, Vince, is a strange bird. The next day Vince shows up at Sheldon's downtown office to ask a slight favor of him. See, he needs Shelly to go to his office and get something from his safe for him. Little does Sheldon know that this will be just the beginning of his involvement in a series of incredible and goofy predicaments.

With the exception of a dated look (it is a 30 year old somewhat low budget movie), The In-Laws holds up really well. The jokes are smart and Alan Arkin does a great job, as he always does playing his "Alan Arkin" character. My exposure to Peter Faulk prior to this was pretty much just the Columbo series, and even that is not something I was too familiar with. He was a great foil to Alan Arkin's character, and was decent as a semi-action star.

The plot is very basic, filled with constant mistaken identity gags but they never try to get overly complicated with the plot. This is a well established genre by now, the buddy adventure. Recent movies seemed to use this formular with slightly better results, Midnight Run with Robert DiNero comes to mind. That is not to say you should skip The In-Laws, it is a great ride and many of those more modern buddy adventure movies probably owe something to this movie. See it.