July 27, 2017
Tonight, we are going to talk about genius. It happens
rarely in film, when every moment of a movie clicks into place, like a
celluloid jigsaw puzzle, and the final picture is a masterpiece. Sure, it
happens with drama. It happens in westerns, in film noir, in suspense. But, in
comedy? It’s often an “almost but no cigar.” But in 1979, when Arthur Hiller
decided to direct Andrew Bergman’s screenplay for The In-Laws, there was a star
in the east, and the cries of “Eureka!” were heard throughout the land
.
Okay… I got a bit carried away, but The In-Laws is quite
possibly the most perfect madcap comedy since Chaplin put his derby on and
picked up his bamboo cane.
The story begins as respected New York dentist Sheldon
Kornpett, played by Alan Arkin, readies himself for his daughter’s wedding. It’s
almost the wedding day, and the Kornpetts have yet to meet the father of the
groom. A dinner party is set for the two sets of parents. And we are introduced
to Vince Ricardo, played by Peter Falk. Vince claims to be a travel agent. He
has stories that are so incredibly unbelievable, though, that it quickly
becomes obvious that even his own family has no real idea what Vince does for
a living. I mean, the man tells stories about tsetse flies, with beaks, no less,
large enough to carry off small children??? What damn travel agent would be
caught dead in a place like that???
Sheldon immediately decides his daughter is NOT marrying
into a family like that, but, reason takes over, and he acquiesces. He agrees
to be friendly with Vince. When Vince shows up at Sheldon’s office, asking if Sheldon
might do him a small favor, “just fifteen minutes, tops,” Sheldon leaves with
Vince. Within minutes, he is breaking into Vince’s office, being shot at by
black-suited thugs, chased down a fire escape, and hiding behind a taxi cab
while the thugs continue to shoot at him. It turns out Vince is a CIA agent who
may or not be on a rogue mission to help a Central American despot ruin the
world’s financial markets. All in a day’s work, huh?
Sheldon and Vince end up taking a charter flight with Vince’s
buddies, Billy and Bing Wong. One of the funnier moments of the movie occurs
when Bing Wong, played by James Hong (last night’s David Lo Pan, the villain
from Big Trouble in Little China), goes through the entire pre-flight safety
lecture in Chinese, while Sheldon simply stares at him, not understanding a
word of it. They end up in a small Central American dictatorship, where they
are to meet Senator Jesus Braunschweiger, who is immediately gunned down,
leaving Sheldon and Vince to flee in his BMW with four flat tires.
I will leave the rest of the story to your pleasure. You
will thank me later…
The immediate detail you will notice upon watching this
movie is the fantastic job Alan Arkin does at playing the straight man to Peter
Falk. Falk almost never stops talking, whether it be to Arkin, a lunch counter
waitress, a cab driver, or even himself. Arkin’s job is to simply react to the
insanity going on around him and repeat what Falk says when Falk goes over the
top. Arkin is a master at facial expressions in comedy, but here, he earns his
doctorate. That being said, Falk earns the same degree, but in a different
category. His doctorate comes in the field of… well… never giving a damn. Vince
Ricardo lives in a world of chaos, a chaos he often causes, but he never gets
upset, or crazy, or even stressed about it. The world is crashing down around
him constantly in this movie, but rather than worry about it, he asks a lunch
counter waitress if “this coffee is freeze-dried, because it is wonderful.”
Sheldon is completely losing his mind about the possibility of being killed,
and Vince assures him that, once they get to the dictator’s palace, they will
have the honored state dish of some sort of chicken sandwich, and goes into
great (and reportedly improvised) detail about how they prepare the chicken,
what spices they use, the bread the sandwich is made with. All the while,
Sheldon is staring at him, wondering how in the hell he wound up in this situation
to begin with.
The other incredible performance comes from Richard
Libertini, who plays dictator General Garcia. For lack of a better way of
stating it, General Garcia is whacked out. I mean, Garcia is nuts, completely nuts. He collects “art,”
in the form of black velvet paintings. He has redesigned the flag of the
country, adding his image and that of a naked prostitute, who is supposed to
represent ‘the oppressed masses.” His great contribution to his country’s arts
is his hand puppetry. Hand puppetry, in that he has conversations with his
hand, on which he has drawn eyes and a mouth. According to Vince, his people
adore the routine. Sheldon simply stares at the general, his hands covering his
mouth in order not to either laugh out loud or scream in terror.
This movie starts off with a bang (literally), and it really
never stops. You may get a calm minute or two, but the movie is only resting,
gathering its breath for the next manic sprint. As we near the end of the
movie, you are offered a detail (which I will not offer), a detail that sets
your mind to wondering exactly why it occurs. When you find out why, you
suddenly realize that Vince might just not be as crazy as he seems. A method in
the madness, as it were. That payoff works so brilliantly you almost want to
sit back and sigh once the movie is over, not unlike after, shall we say, a
moment of passion.
It has been said that Brando was such a fan of this movie,
he would call Arkin up late at night and do Sheldon’s lines back to Arkin over
the phone. He also swore that, if he ever got a chance, he would work with
Bergman on any script he was offered. The story goes that Bergman found out
about this, and began work on a script that would become The Freshman, in which
Brando did, indeed, play the lead, playing a very comedic send-up of his
Godfather role of Vito Corleone. In this case, the Mafia boss was Carmine
Sabatini, also known as “Jimmy the Toucan.” That film, by the way, is also damn
near perfect…
Find The In-Laws and watch it immediately. Do NOT get
suckered in and watch the horrific remake starring Albert Brooks and Michael Douglas.
If you need to know how bad the remake was, supposedly, Alan Arkin and Peter
Falk met in a bar and got rip-roaring drunk, laughing about the reviews of the
remake, and celebrating the fact that the reviews said more about how wonderful
THEIR original movie was than about how bad the remake was…
Throw The In-Laws in the player and sit back and enjoy. If
you’ve never spent two hours laughing so hard you weep, you are in for a treat.
And, for the record, you will find the word “SERPENTINE!!!” becoming a part of
your vocabulary for the rest of your life…
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