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The In-Laws (Full Screen Edition)

The In-Laws (Full Screen Edition)

List Price: $19.97
Your Price: $17.97
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Better then average
Review: This movie is better then average. It is meant to be a light
and funny movie and it meets those expectations.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Hmmm
Review: This one was OK.
However, I did enjoy the whole "Fat Cobra" which Jerry Peyser(Albert Brooks) did a great job with...though I did get quite irritated by all his questioning and insults to Steve Tobias(Michael Douglas). Michael did an excellent job as an undercover CIA Agent and that made it exciting, and all the antics that Jerry & Steve had to go thru together...but I thought Jerry sure could have cut out at least half his whining...

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Ugh
Review: This was the most pitiful remake ever! The chemistry between characters was non-existant as was the humor of the original. The original was far better.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Keeps you on your toes
Review: Well, the kids are getting married. As usual the in-laws-to-be come from different environments. How different you may ask? Well you will just have to watch and find out. The father of the bride Jerry Peyser (Albert Brooks) is a highly specialized doctor. His skills and training will come to play a crucial part in this story. The father of the groom Steve Tobias (Michael Douglas) is a fast paced, never home Xerox salesman. Jerry will soon find out how hectic the life of a Xerox salesman can be.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Quality remake.... of "Meet the Parents"
Review: Why? Why why why?

Well, there are positives to get out of the way first. Albert Brooks is an inspired choice to recreate Alan Arkin's role from the original "In-Laws". He brings to every movie a fully-formed nebbish ready to let loose 6 or 7 really memorable zingers, and this was no exception. Michael Douglas has played a very wide range of stock characters, if not necessarily deep. And the original "In-Laws" certainly wasn't technically perfect: it suffered from atrocious film editing. Why not spruce it up with some CGI submarines, more expansive stunt sequences, and a Paul McCartney soundtrack?

Most of the changes in the remake, however, don't make sense. Brooks is playing a Chicago podiatrist, not a Manhattan dentist. Michael Douglas has been saddled with a female sidekick, the likes of which Peter Falk didn't need. There's considerable more emphasis placed on Brooks's daughter and Douglas's son... so they can argue at length about his pre-marital flings. Candice Bergen has a strenuously unfunny cameo as Douglas's ex-wife (Falk was happily married in the original, albeit to a wife who had no idea what he did for a living).

Most noticeably, the witty humor of the original is all but gone, save for a few Brooks gags. That's all been replaced by a wide variety of warmed-over sex and toilet jokes, which have been funny in a hundred other movies since "The In-Laws" came out, and which are so familiar here that you'll laugh at the joke before it's even finished. Indeed, with the main character being a nebbishy Jewish medical professional from Chicago, and his co-star an over-the-top CIA agent, you'll quickly realize that this is a remake of "Meet the Parents" more than anything else.

The accomplished David Suchet shows up for a pointless role only faintly evocative of Richard Libertini's in the original. I'm sure that blatant gags about repressed gay terrorists are still funny somewhere, but it is possible to do a movie without them. Right?

I wasn't expecting a carbon copy of the original "In-Laws". However, I was expecting something lively and original. And this movie isn't it.


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