The In-Laws film review

certificate_12A

THE IN-LAWS

If the sight of Albert Brooks exiting a Jacuzzi in a thong or David Suchet camping it up as a flamboyant arms dealer is your idea of comedy, then The In-Laws will not disappoint. If, however, you were hoping for something a little more consequential from these two gifted actors, then you would be better served revisiting one of their past works. Almost any of them, in fact.

Teaming Brooks with Michael Douglas in a remake of the 1979 comedy starring Alan Arkin and Peter Falk might well have appeared a good idea when conceived, but the path of good intentions leads to an awful lot of bad movies. Brooks plays the uptight neurotic with regularity and aplomb while Douglas rarely veers away from the slick and conceited, so here both are on familiar turf. The hope was that once thrust together, their characters' oil and water incompatibility would provide the comedy, unfortunately the incompatibility stretched to Douglas and Brooks, who rarely seemed in sync with the tone they should adopt.

Douglas plays undercover CIA agent Steve Tobias, a man so devoted to his career it costs him his marriage to Judy (Candice Bergen) and a meaningful relationship with his son Marc (Ryan Reynolds). When we encounter him he's globetrotting with his feisty assistant (Robin Tunney), negotiating the sale of a nuclear submarine. Jerry Peyser (Albert Brooks) on the other hand, is an overwrought podiatrist who is so nervous of flying he once had an anxiety attack watching an airline commercial.

With Jerry's daughter Melissa (Lindsay Sloane) and Marc about to get married, the two fathers find their contrasting personalities and lifestyles colliding. Interrupting Tobias discussing CIA business in a restaurant lavatory, Jerry realizes he is perhaps not the upright Xerox salesman he claims to be. As a result he becomes embroiled in Tobias' murky world where humiliation lurks at every turn, mostly at the expense of his "fanny pack" and the romantic attentions of the flaming French connection Thibodoux (Suchet).

The In-Laws would have benefited from a firmer hand, but director Andrew Fleming seems unwilling, or unable, to steer Douglas and Brooks in the same direction. So while Douglas breezes through, rarely missing a chance to ham things up, Brooks stays true to his character, appearing perpetually uncomfortable. Though, in Brooks' case, the feeling seems genuine and understandable.