No.204 : The In-Laws (1979)

The In-Laws at the IMDb

Columbo and Alan Arkin team up for this screwball comedy, which I thought was dire but seems to be quite well regarded - go figure!

The film starts with an overly elaborate bank robbery as a bunch of hooded men grab a bank truck with a big magnet and lift it over a fence where they cut the doors off to get at the loot. They disregard the cash for some metal plates, which I correctly guessed where engravings for bill printing. Go me. It’s not clear why the mint are driving the valuable plates around some back streets but there you go.

A robber takes the plates on a long journey as the titles run and ends up with Columbo. The robber says he needs the agreed $1.5 million paid by tomorrow. Columbo says that this may present a problem as his son is soon to be married and he has to meet the in-laws - that’s the name of the film!

Alan Arkin plays the other half of this odd couple as a buttoned down dentist who yells too much. The two families meet and Columbo tells tall tales  before hiding one of the plates in Arkin’s basement.

He then shows up at Arkin’s dental office and ropes him into a scheme where the remaining plates are removed from his safe under the noses of some heavies. I wasn’t clear why he split the plates up or why he left them somewhere where he couldn’t get at them but you have to go with it. Arkin manages to recover the plates but doesn’t appreciate being shot at, and his wife is unhappy too as she found the other one and called in the cops.

At this point I wasn’t clear if Columbo was a crook or a CIA operative as he claimed. He gets disavowed by his handler Ed Begley Jnr, but that may be a bluff too. Anyway, before the wedding the two guys have innumerable and intolerable adventures where they fly to Honduras in a racist airline ‘Wong Airways’ before trying to offload the goods to a tiresome dictator. Will they survive? What is the plot? And will they make the wedding on time?

You’ll probably have gathered that I didn’t enjoy this one too much and to be honest the only smirk the film earned from me was the dictator’s new flag for his country that has a big pair of knockers on it. I know lowbrow humour wins the day, but I didn’t enjoy the farce or wackiness that permeated throughout the film.

I normally like Alan Arkin, but as a shouty and neurotic dentist he was no fun and Columbo was no better as the man of mystery I couldn’t get interested in. At times the comedy was so on the nose I could barely watch, with the dictator’s hand puppet and silly voice just plain embarrassing.

The plot was sketchy at best and really just served to put our heroes into funny situations. The idea that the plates will be used to destabilise the economy was fair enough but why not just take out the baddies with some carpet bombing, rather than have an overlong and unfunny caper to achieve the same result? Oh, so you can have a film?, I see.

The set pieces were poor with an overlong car chase that inevitably resulted in the demise of some fruit, and another sequence where they kept circling with the baddies in their cars -’Again?’ says Arkin at the fifth repetition - I’m afraid so Alan.

The high praise lavished on this film tells you that it must appeal to someone, but it wasn’t me. The capers were too contrived and the characters lacked anything that made me give a toss.

THE Tag Line : As Fun as a Visit to Your In-Laws -  50%

No.35 : The Rocketeer (1991)

The Rocketeer at the IMDb

I had pretty good memories of ‘The Rocketeer’ but was slightly wrong footed from the start when the ‘Disney’ logo came up - surely the House of Mouse have done nothing that appeals to anyone over 10 years old? ‘Herbie Goes Bananas’ excepted, of course.

Well there is certainly no sex, drug taking swearing or nudity but seeing as it’s an old fashioned adventure romp it manages to navigate past these shortcomings and remain an enjoyable offering.

The film is set just before the second World War with Nazis, spies and saboteurs all over the shop. We open with a young pilot testing a new aircraft when he happens upon an FBI chase and cops a bullet in the engine for his troubles. He manages to get the plane back to the airstrip just as the Feds and the gangsters arrive, causing his already stricken craft to blow up. One gangster manages to hide his loot before being arrested and our man and his chirpy mechanic Alan Arkin are left to count the cost.

The airfield owner tells them they’ll have to break out their old clown plane to entertain the air show crowds but as they dust the old bird off they find what the gangster has left behind - a super duper jet pack, designed and build by Howard Hughes. Seeing its potential worth, our men decide to make a few bucks off the machine before handing it back; but elsewhere more nefarious plans are afoot.

Paulie out of ‘Goodfellas’ has been employed by Timothy Dalton’s dashing but traitorous actor to get the jet pack for his Nazi pals. He kidnaps the Rocketeer’s girl Jennifer Connelly and it’s up to our guys to get into lots of situations that could benefit from having a jet pack to save the day. With the plan exposed Dalton makes off with Connelly and her zeppelins, sorry in a zeppelin , with the Rocketeer in hot pursuit. You’ll pretty much guess the rest.

If you ask most people they’ll wax lyrical about ‘The Rocketeer’ and rightly so ; there’s a lot to like. For a start the cast is spot on with the slightly slow but oh so dashing Bill Campbell in the lead. It’s a shame he’s not gone onto greater things but he did at least get a decent gig in Ricky Gervais’ ‘Ghost Town’ a couple of years back. Connelly is good fun too especially as she spends most of the film in a low cut ball gown. Timothy Dalton is great as the moustache twirling bad guy reportedly based on Errol Flynn and Alan Arkin is his always likable self as the cheery mechanic.

The plot is pretty basic with all the action basically happening over a day and a night. He finds the thing, leans to fly it and then saves the day in it. I’m not saying he should have had a love scene with it too, it just seems a bit straightforward in terms of plot direction. The end scenes with the Zeppelin were a good idea as up to that bit the only use of the rocket pack seemed to be a means of getting somewhere quickly.

There is no sense of danger in the film and despite a Rondo Hatton-esque unkillable bad guy most of the deaths occur off screen and those that don’t have a comic element to them. The sets and costumes are great and the whole thing is evocative of a more innocent time in both the movies and the world in general.

If you think the plot is a bit slight or you think things fall together a bit too easily you may be right, but for the most part I’d say ‘shut up I’m trying to watch this nice film again - Jennifer’s dress surely can’t stand the strain this time around?!’.


THE Tag Line : Strap It On And Brace Yourself 73%