THE CRITERION COLLECTION PRESENTS: THE IN-LAWS. (1979) DIRECTED BY ARTHUR HILLER. WRITTEN BY ANDREW BERGMAN. STARRING PETER 'COLUMBO' FALK, ALAN ARKIN, ED BEGLEY JR. AND RICHARD LIBERTINI. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This month's Blu-Ray offering from the
rather excellent CRITERION COLLECTION is
a film starring a man whom we probably know better as 'everyone's
favourite rumpled television detective,' Columbo,
from the long-running TV series of the same name.
Peter
Falk, who passed away in 2011 at the ripe old age of eighty-four, acted in
more than a handful of films and television shows during his long
lifetime, but he'll always be remembered for his role as the
shuffling, ambling scruffily-overcoated detective who liked to chomp on cigars
and make occasional references to a wife whom we never saw. (Well,
I certainly never saw her anyway...!)
Columbo
was seemingly absent-minded and some ill-advised criminals probably
thought he was no threat at all to them but boy!, were
they wrong. Columbo's scattiness of mind and scruffy appearance
concealed a razor-sharp brain and an eye for detail that was the
undoing of many a scurrilous murderer trying to inherit his or her
spouse's dosh or take over his business partner's company. Well, that
was usually what the little blighters were up to in every episode, haha.
Columbo's
'thing' was that he'd
pretend to be satisfied with what the killer was telling him and he'd
get up to leave. At the last minute, however, he'd scratch his messy
dark head and turn around before saying: 'Ummm, there IS
just one more thing...' and then
bam!, he'd deliver his
killer blow and the murderer would know they were caught. It was the same in every episode.
The poetic
justice of it all would always hit you right between the eyes. After a
whole hour of Columbo's cat-and-mouse game with the murderer, whom
we'd see committing the grisly deed right at the outset so there'd be no mystery as to their identity, the case
would be expertly wound up by the scruffy detective whom everyone had
foolishly underestimated.
Some
interesting facts about COLUMBO, for
any fans out there. The first ever episode was directed back in 1971
by Steven Spielberg in one of his first ever directing jobs. Four
years later, of course, he went on to direct JAWS and
the rest, as they say, is history. But what a way for the TV series
about an untidy, distracted detective to start out...!
Speaking of
Columbo's legendary untidiness, I'm sure I remember an episode where
his job brought him to some sort of downtown Mission for homeless men and- you
guessed it- he was mistaken for a down-and-out and hilariously told that he'd be
kitted out with some nice clean togs. Ooooh, the shame of it all...!
Peter
Falk's 2006 autobiography is aptly and sweetly named JUST
ONE MORE THING. I have the
box-set of every COLUMBO episode
ever made, by the way. It was given to me as a birthday present and
it has all the episodes from 1968 right up to 2003, by which time dear old
Peter Falk may have had snow on the roof but he still had a lovely
full head of hair, God bless his buttons.
Anyway,
he's brilliant as Vince Ricardo in this film we're meant to be
talking about(!), THE IN-LAWS. He
plays a 'businessman' whose son is about to get married to the daughter
of a Manhattan dentist and, naturally, the in-laws-to-be have got to
meet up and have dinner before the big day.
The dentist,
Sheldon S. Kornpett, D.D.S., is a normal everyday kind of guy and he
finds Vince's chaotic, mysterious and oddball behaviour at the dinner party so
off-putting that he tries to dissuade his daughter from marrying into
Vince's family. But he hasn't seen the half of it with Vince yet.
Vince is in
actual fact a CIA agent who's up to his eyes in a kerfuffle involving
engraving plates belonging to the US Treasury Department. It isn't
long before he's involved his unwilling in-law-to-be, Sheldon, in his
desperate plan to get twenty million dollars for the plates from a
Honduran General, which in turn he'll (apparently?) turn straight
back over to the CIA.
It's one of
those brilliant screwball comedies where an ordinary person- that is to say,
Sheldon- gets involved with a charismatic, eccentric character like
Vince Ricardo and ends up in all kinds of
outrageous and even dangerous, life-threatening situations.
The funniest of these is probably when the Honduran General, a
typical crooked Central American dictator-type (hopefully any such types reading
this won't kill me for saying that!), puts Vince and
Sheldon in front of a firing squad after he's gotten what he wants
from them. Vince tries hilariously to stall the proceedings while
Sheldon loses it altogether, bemoaning the day he ever met the madcap
Vince. I suppose that one can hardly blame him at this point...!
The two
men are absolutely phenomenal together.
They're a terrific comic double act and they just buzz off each other
so well that it makes for marvellously funny viewing. It's probably the
original 'MEET THE PARENTS'-type
movie and it's out right now on Blu-Ray from THE
CRITERION COLLECTION, complete
with some rather delicious extra features to titillate your viewer's
soul.
Peter
Falk was in Rob Reiner's 1987 smash hit romantic comedy fantasy-type film THE
PRINCESS BRIDE as
well, by the way. He played the kindly old Grand-dad who came to read a
storybook to his under-the-weather grandson, Fred THE
WONDER YEARS Savage.
The
cranky kid isn't down with all the lovey-dovey smoochy stuff in the book at first
but, as the wonderful fairy story progresses, he grows more and more
enraptured with it, much to his dear old Grand-dad's delight. It's a
fantastic movie and one of Peter Falk's finest achievements. Along
with THE IN-LAWS,
naturally...!
That's about all for now, anyway. Oh, but just hang on there a
minute.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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