DVD Andrew Nickolds
THE IN-LAWS Director Arthur Hiller, 1979, Criterion Collection 103 minutes
Periodically Hollywood yokes together two of its bankable male stars and sets them on a collision course leading to madcap misadventures and mayhem, sometimes merry (Bing Crosby and Bob Hope), often less so (Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, the calamitous Ishtar starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman). The best of them are one-offs, showcasing their stars’ talents and resisting any sequels with diminishing returns: they include the dynamically funny if foul-mouthed Midnight Run (hard-boiled Robert De Niro dragging the meek bail-jumping accountant Charles Grodin across America) and The In-laws.
New York dentist Sheldon Kornpett (Alan Arkin) is about to see his daughter married to the son of Vince Ricardo (Peter Falk) who claims at the first gathering of the two families to be engaged on vaguely defined work for the government – it has taken him to Guatemala, where the tsetse flies are big enough to carry off babies and cattle. Sheldon, upright and uptight at the same time, is suspicious, his doubts raised further by the framed photo of President John F Kennedy in Ricardo’s office, signed ‘To Vince – at least we tried’, dated around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The audience is already one step ahead, having seen Ricardo involved in the mysterious hold-up of a security van where no money is stolen, merely something that is hidden in the Kornpetts’ basement during the gettingto-know-you dinner.
This turns out to be an engraving plate for large-denomination dollar bills; more are hidden in Ricardo’s office, just around the corner from Kornpett’s practice. Deeply unwilling (as he is to remain throughout the film), Kornpett is persuaded as a familial gesture to retrieve the plates and for his pains is chased, shot at and pursued across New York to an airport where he and Ricardo scramble aboard a small plane and take off for an island off the coast of Latin America.
There is more gunfire as they land – Kornpett miraculously dodging bullets by following Ricardo’s instruction ‘Serpentine! Serpentine!’ – before they make it to the palace of the island’s mad leader General García (Richard Libertini) whose chief adviser is a ‘Señor Wences’ face drawn on his hand. After giving the future in-laws a guided tour of the palace and its grotesque national flags featuring bare-breasted women, García relieves them of the currency plates and escorts them in front of a firing squad. Meanwhile, lavish arrangements for the Kornpett/ricardo wedding proceed.
As the other family members are probably the most redundant collection of characters since the back row of Dad’s
Army, the film stands or falls by the chemistry of the main performers and both Alan Arkin and Peter Falk succeed triumphantly, Arkin trying to hang onto his sanity (in the face of an American embassy official telling him that Ricardo was too crazy even to be allowed to stay in the CIA) while Falk remains imperturbable and serenely selfconfident even as the firing squad raises its rifles. Old hands by now at scenestealing parts, together they add lustre to what was already an accomplished original script by Andrew Bergman, the co-writer on Mel Brooks’s Blazing
Saddles, and later responsible for, among others, the excellent comedies Soapdish and The Freshman, in which Marlon Brando gorgeously parodies his Vito Corleone character in The Godfather.
Arthur Hiller, the veteran Canadian director of The In-laws, died earlier this year after a long career which encompassed big hits ( Love Story) and equally big flops ( Man of La Mancha): his most memorable work was achieved in collaboration with screenwriters such as Paddy Chayevsky, Neil Simon and Colin Higgins, whose script for Silver
Streak gave the late Gene Wilder his best comic/romantic lead. The composer on
The In-laws was the extraordinary (and extraordinarily unsung) John Morris, probably still best known for ‘Springtime for Hitler’ in The Producers but who wrote fabulous scores for other Mel Brooks films including Young
Frankenstein and The Elephant Man. And on the subject of music, who knew that among his many other acting and directing achievements Alan Arkin also co-wrote ‘The Banana Boat Song’? Available from Criterion Collection on Blu-ray, price £24.99. Also via Amazon at £15.75 including p&p at time of going to press.