A US State treasury van is robbed, but the thieves take only one thing: the engraved plate used to make a 500$ bill. They hand it over to Vince, a CIA operative. Vince’s son Tommy is going to get married to Barbara, the daughter of dentist Sheldon. When they finally meet, Vince persuades Sheldon to get the plate from his office, but Sheldon is then chased by two thugs. Vince reveals his plan to Sheldon: General Garcia from Tijada wants to buy the plates in order to flood the market with trillions of dollars, thereby causing an inflation and an economic collapse of the US, so Vince wants to give the plates to him and then arrest him. Vince and Sheldon travel via plane to Tijada and hand the plates to Garcia. Just as Garcia is about to have them shot, the CIA intervenes and arrests him. Sheldon and Vince return to New Jersey to attend their kids’ wedding.
This film by director Arthur Hiller is the closest someone came to distilling a Screwball comedy in the 70s: it is at times wonderfully zanny and wacky, and even though not every joke works, you chuckle almost throughout the entire story, sometimes even in a delayed reaction when you just try to visualize all these insane dialogues. Peter Falk dominates the film as the CIA operative Vince with crazy ideas, and his highlight is the now legendary dinner sequence in the first act, where he talks about his visit to the Guatemalan jungle, or "the bush" as he calls it, and gives a demented monologue about "tsetse flies the size of eagles" with a serious face that is so howlingly funny that it is better not spoiled out of respect to its comic perfection. Unfortunately, "The In-Laws" are not able to repeat this high frequency of humor again, and fall at times into the trap of a forced farce or low frequency humor, yet some jokes are still solid. The Communist-like ruler of the fictional Latin American country General Garcia delivers a great joke when he presents the new flag of his country: a flag with his face on it (!), perfectly summing up the egoism of such systems. Alan Arkin is good as Sheldon, though somewhat coiled at times, and never as genuine as Falk. However, even he benefits when they share a grand joke through dialogues: "I thought you wanted to buy a magazine!" - "I did, I wanted to buy The Hustler, but it was in Spanish, El Hustlero." Spoofing both Cold War spy films and the horror of a dad realizing that he cannot stand his new family, the in-laws, at the same time, Hiller delivered a relaxed cult film that deserves to be seen more than once.
Grade:++
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