Alright, fellow tapeheads, gather ‘round. Remember that feeling? Scanning the packed shelves of the video store, maybe under the slightly buzzing fluorescent lights, looking for something… different? Sometimes you stumbled onto pure gold, a movie you hadn’t heard much about but grabbed you from the first frame. For me, one of those glorious finds, rewound and rewatched until the tape practically smoothed itself out, was 1979’s The In-Laws. It might technically pre-date our usual 80s/90s sweet spot, but its spirit, its chaotic energy, feels right at home in VHS Heaven. This isn't just a comedy; it's a masterclass in escalating panic disguised as a pre-wedding meet-and-greet.
### When Worlds Collide Over Dinner
The setup is deceptively simple: Mild-mannered Manhattan dentist Sheldon "Shelly" Kornpett (Alan Arkin) is about to marry off his daughter. All he wants is a nice, normal dinner with the groom's parents. Enter Vince Ricardo (Peter Falk), the groom's father. Falk, dialing his charmingly shady persona up to eleven (a delightful contrast for fans who knew him best as the rumpled Columbo), starts spinning tales that sound suspiciously like covert CIA operations involving stolen U.S. Treasury plates and Central American dictators. Arkin’s performance is pure comedic genius – a symphony of nervous breakdowns played out across his increasingly terrified face. You see the beads of sweat forming even through the slightly fuzzy resolution of a well-loved VHS tape.
This initial dinner scene, penned by the brilliant Andrew Bergman (who also wrote Blazing Saddles and Fletch), is where the fuse is lit. Bergman reportedly based the idea on the sheer anxiety of meeting his own future in-laws, twisting that universal dread into something extraordinary. What follows isn't your typical action flick explosion-fest, but a relentless, hilarious plunge into international espionage, all anchored by Arkin’s desperate attempts to stay sane and, preferably, alive.
### The Accidental Action Hero
Director Arthur Hiller, a versatile filmmaker who could navigate drama like Love Story just as easily as the comedic chaos here, keeps the pacing taut. The "action," such as it is, feels hilariously, dangerously real precisely because Shelly Kornpett is so utterly unprepared for it. There are no quippy one-liners from our "hero" as bullets fly; there's just Arkin, bug-eyed and yelping, embodying every sane person's reaction to being shot at by assassins or chased across tarmacs. Remember those sequences? They weren’t slick, CGI-smoothed affairs. You felt the bumps in the road, the genuine panic, the feeling that things could actually go wrong, which grounded the absurdity beautifully.
Retro Fun Fact: The production reportedly used locations in New Jersey and Mexico to double for the fictional Central American nation of Tijada, adding to that slightly gritty, low-fi feel that makes the danger seem paradoxically more credible amidst the laughs.
### "Serpentine, Shel! Serpentine!"
You can't talk about The In-Laws without mentioning the supporting players, especially the unforgettable Richard Libertini as General Garcia, the eccentric dictator of Tijada. His scenes with Falk and Arkin are comedic dynamite. The sequence where Falk advises a terrified Arkin, dodging bullets on an airfield, to run in a serpentine pattern ("Serpentine, Shel! Serpentine!") has rightly gone down in comedy history. Libertini’s performance is so bizarrely captivating, a portrait of cheerful madness that steals every scene he's in. It’s the kind of unhinged character performance that felt perfectly at home in late 70s/early 80s cinema.
The chemistry between Falk and Arkin is the film’s engine. Falk’s Vince is unflappable, treating dodging bullets and negotiating with dictators like discussing the weather. Arkin’s Shelly is his perfect foil, the perpetually flapped everyman. Their interplay, the way they bounce off each other’s energy – one radiating chaotic calm, the other vibrating with sheer terror – is something modern buddy comedies rarely capture with such precision. Was there ever a more perfectly mismatched pair thrust into danger?
### More Than Just Laughs
While The In-Laws wasn't a massive box office smash initially ($19 million domestic take, roughly $78 million today), it was critically adored and quickly developed a devoted following, especially once it hit home video. It became one of those tapes – the one you recommended enthusiastically to friends, the one that guaranteed surprised laughter. Its influence can be felt in later action-comedies that paired an ordinary person with an agent of chaos, but few matched its unique blend of sharp writing, brilliant performances, and genuine heart underneath the mayhem.
It skillfully walks a tightrope between outright farce and something resembling a paranoid thriller, a tone perfectly suited to the slightly frayed nerves of the late 1970s. The practical nature of the stunts and escapes, even when played for laughs, gives it a texture that feels wonderfully analogue in today's digital world.
Rating: 9/10
This rating isn't just for the laughs, which are plentiful and sharp. It's for the flawless chemistry between Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, Andrew Bergman’s razor-sharp script, Arthur Hiller’s perfectly balanced direction, and that unforgettable performance by Richard Libertini. It captures a specific kind of grounded absurdity that feels both of its time and timelessly funny.
Final Take: The In-Laws is a comedic pressure cooker that turns mundane pre-wedding jitters into an international incident. It’s proof that sometimes the greatest action heroes are the ones screaming "Serpentine!" – a bona fide classic that still delivers gut-busting laughs and nail-biting giggles, straight from the golden age of finding unexpected treasures on VHS. If you haven't seen it, track it down. If you have, you know it's time for a rewatch.