The In-Laws

Starring: Albert Brooks, Michael Douglas

RS: 2of 4 Stars

2003 Comedy

Everything sly and low-key about The In-Laws, a 1979 comedy about a dentist (Alan Arkin) and a rogue CIA agent (Peter Falk) with nothing in common except that the son of one is marrying the daughter of the other, is supersized and coarsened in Andrew Fleming's remake. There are laughs, thanks to Michael Douglas as the agent and Albert Brooks as the doc, now a prissy, fastidious Chicago podiatrist. When the agent takes the doc and his family to a Vietnamese restaurant that serves live snake, Brooks' comic delivery is martini-dry ("I never eat while my food's still eating"). The rest, with its caricatures of gays, Asians, even Barbra Streisand, is all wet.

PETER TRAVERS
(May 23, 2003)