Albert Brooks made short films for the original season of Saturday Night Live and after 8 episodes he was axed, forced to say good-bye to an audience that just yawned at his every attempt to be entertaining. In his final short film, he apologized and said he was leaving to research what people found funny and would return when he figured it out. He was never invited back. In 2003, he got lucky landing the role as Marlin in Finding Nemo and all of a sudden people knew his name again, however, in that same year, he starred as Jerry Peyser in The In-Laws and after watching it, I quickly wanted to forget his name once more.
Joining him is Michael Douglas, who, once again, is movie poster fodder for shitty romantic comedies (see Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) playing as the CIA version of Gordon Gekko who is the father in-law at the same time he’s a rogue CIA agent at the same time he’s not…rogue…at the same time he’s in the middle of taking down a crime lord at the same time he’s undercover for that crime lord at the same time I’m sleeping and puking in my mouth a little bit. In a manner of “plot pushing convenience,” Steve Tobias (Douglas) is forced to bring bumbling moron Jerry into his world saving* mission a la Eugene Levy a la Adam Sandler a la every other bumbling moron meets agent operative movie ever and both Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum travel around the globe to finish what Tobias started so they can focus on the wedding of their children that the movie occasionally reminds itself is happening also.
This movie really didn’t need to be a wedding movie. I’m convinced that it was because the box for the BackLOG just has enjoyed pissing me off for the last few weeks with wedding movie after wedding movie because it knew how sick of them I was getting, but I probably would have enjoyed this movie more if the wedding took precedence and the CIA mission uncomfortably trickled into the story instead of the other way around. It seemed like a bit of a Cop Out (sorry, I just thought of another bumbling example.).
I’ve never been good with these buddy-buddy lawful mission comedies because they never know if they are being serious about the action piece or if they need to shove in some comedy to try to stick with the genre and like the previously mentioned examples, they always seem to be inconsistent about what it wants to do. In the case of The In-Laws it just said “fuck the genre expectations…we’ll screw them both up.” There wasn’t really any action and wasn’t really any comedy, unless you find Albert Brooks’s incessant whining funny, but personally standing in the mirror cutting my ears off seems a bit more humorous.
Tackling themes of poor-parenting, control issues, anal-retentiveness, and homosexuality (among other easy gags), The In-Laws lacked the cleverness, good-sense, or even willpower to make a fun, light-hearted, high-spirited wedding comedy and instead just made a snoozapalooza of crappy jokes* and pointless cookie-cutter sentimentality. I was bored and frustrated at how much this stupid movie looked like a first draft script thrown on screen. I expect that shit out of Rob Schneider, this was almost insulting to everyone in it, including Albert Brooks, who’s usually an insult unto himself!
For failing miserably at everything and pointlessly being a wedding movie just to piss me off, The In-Laws gets a nerve-wracking 4 dustbusters out of 10. Ironically enough, two years after this was made, Albert Brooks made a movie titled Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. Apparently he’s still doing his research on what makes people laugh.
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