The In-Laws (2003)

(In French, On TV, May 2022) One of the problems of having been an active cinephile throughout the 2000s (evidence of which is freely available elsewhere on this site) is that it was difficult, in the moment, to identify what was so characteristic during the decade – it’s harder than you think to identify fads from lasting innovation, and so the elements that make us associate film to a specific era. Until you see a film much later than that era, of course. So it is that The In-Laws now feel irremediably dated to the early 2000s, with a fake gloss, dubious stylistic choices made easy by the technology of the time, and a slap-dash approach to plotting that assumes a very decade-specific kind of stupidity from its audience. A remake of the quirky 1979 Alan Alda/Peter Falk vehicle, this version features Michael Douglas as a loose-cannon CIA agent, and Albert Brooks as the milquetoast in-law who suddenly gets drawn into comic international schemes. From the opening “action” scene, featuring very dubious action sequences and -more crucially- the use of “Live and Let Die” that creates Bond comparisons that the film can’t sustain, The In-Laws is in trouble: It’s polished and expansive, but not that funny, the action isn’t that good and the result feels useless. While Douglas and Brooks are well cast (perhaps too much so – Douglas can’t help but be cool and credible, while Brooks can’t help but be neurotic and terrified), the rest of the film is silly rather than amusing, and the plot mechanics are intensely predictable. An overlong ending proves that the film has overstayed its welcome. Perhaps most damning of all, twenty years later, is realizing that this was a wholly unremarkable mainstream Hollywood release at the time – so unremarkable that it didn’t seem like the kind of thing I had to watch at the time. Hence one doubt in revisiting a decade I actively lived through: maybe it’s not quite as good as I remembered it.