The In-Laws (1979) a pure-bred comedy unicorn (Review)

For all the wonders of the 1970s New Hollywood, it’s not rich in classic comedies.  Newly reissued by the Criterion Collection, 1979’s The In-Laws remedies that, while also standing up well against the comedy subgenres and styles of the decades before and after.  Its premise – a straight-laced dentist is dragged into a globe-trotting adventure by his daughter’s fiancee’s father – is the kind of thing Richard Lester or Blake Edwards might have had fun with back in the 1960s.  Its focus on action and CIA skullduggery, on the other hand, looks forward to the buddy-action formula Shane Black would perfect ten years after it was released.

Refreshingly, by bridging these two styles, The In-Laws manages to resemble neither.  Compared to a 1960s spectacle-led comedy like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, it’s much less thirsty for laughs. It begins with an armoured car robbery that could come straight out of a serious heist movie, and even when it gets zanier in the third act stars Alan Arkin and Peter Falk play everything dead straight.  It also has an innocent charm that later action-comedies would bury under a mass of stunts and violence.  The violence is bloodless, and its politics are subtle and uncynical.  After Watergate and Vietnam, it’s incredible that audiences went along with the idea that a CIA officer could be as much of a good-hearted naif as Falk’s Vince Ricardo – but somehow, with a careful infusion of Kennedy-era nostalgia in his backstory, the film pulls it off.

It’s not surprising that Falk and Arkin play off beautifully against each other since the whole impetus of the film was to pair them off.  Arkin knew he would work well with Falk, and asked writer Andrew Bergman to create a story that would allow Falk to continually drive him mad.  What Bergman came up with was a classic caper comedy that somehow fit into a Hollywood landscape dominated by directors like Michael Cimino and Hal Ashby.  It’s a complex tonal gamble that director Arthur Hiller gets spot-on.  The early scenes have a winningly relaxed, naturalistic feel that Bergman – a credited writer on Blazing Saddles before this – gradually perverts with thrillingly bizarre comedy and wild action.

Admittedly, in his first meeting with Arkin’s Sheldon Kornpett, Vince goes off on a bizarre anecdote about being unable to stop giant tsetse flies kidnapping children because of a nefarious piece of government red tape called “the Guacamole act”.  But this somehow doesn’t rupture the reality of the film, because at this point it’s quite possible Vince is completely delusional.  It’s one of the things the 2003 remake got so wrong by casting Michael Douglas – a fine actor, yes, but his movie-star wattage makes it obvious he’s going to be a real spy.  Falk, by contrast, started his career in the improvised dramas of John Cassavetes and became a legend playing a detective who criminals constantly underestimated because of his shabby, unprepossessing style.  Falk’s laid-back masculinity is perfect for Vince – he could be anyone or do anything, and the audience finds that as mesmerising as Sheldon finds it maddening.

So you have a great script full of quotable one-liners, and you also have a central duo so good that, on one occasion, Arkin manages to make the word “toothpaste” funny in and of itself.  Hiller’s contribution, though, comes out of nowhere.  It’s not as if he was a bad director; he had notable earlier hits with The Americanization of Emily and The Out-of-Towners, and would go on to work with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor on several films in their buddy-comedy cycle.  He was also responsible for doomed stabs at making Al Pacino and Eli Wallach into comic leads, and had his biggest hit with the vomitous tearjerker Love Story.  There’s nothing else in his filmography that suggests the kind of strange grace of The In-Laws, its magic balancing act between energetic farce, delicate character comedy and bullet-strewn action.  Then again, there isn’t much like it in anyone else’s filmography either.  It’s a pure-bred unicorn, the kind of happy match of talent and timeliness that comes around very infrequently, and ought to be celebrated when it does.

Criterion’s extras are solid as ever.  The trivia-packed commentary was recorded in 2003, so it features the much-missed Falk alongside Arkin, Hiller and Bergman.  There’s also a charming featurette in which choice cuts from the movie’s rich supporting cast of “hey, I know you!” actors (Ed Begley Jr., David Paymer, James Hong and Nancy Dussault) talk about their lasting affection for the project.

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