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This truly hilarious comedy is one of the funniest movies of the period. No one does the sort of deadpan face that says "I can't believe what I'm hearing and seeing" like Alan Arkin. Peter Falk's comic abilities match his skill in heavier roles. The interplay between them is marvelous, matching that of Lemmon & Matthau (one wishes they had made more films together). Many side-splitting moments, and some superbly comic dialogue. Not to be missed.

Serpentine, Shel, serpentine!!!

Alan Arkin and Peter Falk made a great comic duo in this classic comedy. Each one bounces off the other in excellently timed humor.

The story is wild and off the wall. Peter Falk's secret agent guy is too, and he has you and co-star Alan Arkin guessing whether he is a legitimate government agent, or some kind of schizophrenic maniac. The two are the respective dads of two soon to be wed kids, and their shenanigans take precedence over their offspring and the upcoming nuptials. Arkin's straight-laced everyman who rapidly waxes panicky, then neurotic due to being suddenly cast in the bizarre world of Falk makes for brilliantly hilarious contrast between the two.

Needless to say, Falk is on a case and gets Arkin inexorably caught up in the situation, which soon degenerates into a wild romp with loud explosions, shootings, and other confusion. The "Serpentine!" routine is a classic of riotous buffoonery.

Falk and Arkin understand comedy, and manipulate it well. Their comic chemistry is worthy of comparison to some of the classic duos over the years, as they ping-pong the lunacy back and forth with expert timing and delivery. This original is far better than its recent remake, and is recommended.

This is one of the funniest and most underrated movies ever made. Just when you think it's about to slow down and become a normal movie, it veers in a whole other, even crazier (and arguably funnier) direction than you could have ever hoped for. With brilliant performances by Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, and Richard Libertini (who has one of the film's best lines: "These are the best security men in the world. They used to work for J.C. Penney"), this is a must see for any fan of true film comedy.

Arthur Hiller directed this funny comedy that stars Alan Arkin as Sheldon Kornpett, a successful dentist whose daughter is about to get married. The groom's father Vince Ricardo(played by Peter Falk) is cagey about his profession, but shortly before the wedding, he comes to see Sheldon at work requesting his assistance in a job related matter that escalates into a shootout and chase, where they find themselves on the run from New York City to Central America, where they become involved with a wacky dictator(played by Richard Libertini) who wants them shot... Wild and unpredictable comedy is surprisingly good, with two memorable lead performances, and a most original script.

I'm a big Peter Falk fan, so I watched this movie because he was in it. I was in for quite a surprise. It has quickly become one of my favorite comedies of all. Peter Falk and Alan Arkin are a perfect pair. The great thing about this movie is that it seems to invent itself as it goes along. The movie isn't following any type of formula, it's making itself up as it goes along, or so it seems. Very funny. My rating: 10

In some ways, this reminded me of Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three in that both have collected characters at their core who watch their control over their world fall away and descend into anarchy. They are ultimately both quite different, but the overall movement of the plot into madness recalled each other to me.

My only real problem with the film is how it begins. Knowing nothing of the movie when I started it other than the cover art, I was surprised to see a thriller-like heist take place. It's not that I feel like comedies can't start with heist-like sequence, it's that I ended up feeling, as the movie went along, that our point of view character was Alan Arkin's Sheldon. We should have started with him in the normal environment of his dentist's office, met the crazy new father-in-law of his daughter who talked about giant flies carrying away children, and just thought of Vince as a weirdo along with him. After the first ten minutes or so, that's exactly what happens, but the first scene showing Vince having a part in a heist of a US Treasury truck tells the audience that Vince is more than just a weirdo. It's the wrong place to start.

From then, though, we do follow Sheldon as he decides to make the effort to connect with his daughter's soon to be father-in-law and do him a small favor in the middle of a workday. That small favor ends up leading to Sheldon grabbing a bag from Vince's ninth floor office, dodging bullets as he descends the fire escape to the ground floor, and running through foot traffic to avoid more bullets. Once he's in for a penny, though, Sheldon is in for a pound. He gets implicated in the treasury truck robbery and needs to attach himself to Vince in an adventure that takes them from New York to a small South American country run by a mad general who talks to his hand and loves tiger paintings. The ending is absurd and funny and brings together a lot of what came before.

My favorite bit in the movie is something that almost feels extraneous, though I think it is the perfect encapsulation of where Sheldon is at that moment. On the plane to South America, Sheldon is sitting in the back of the small aircraft with Vince flying and two Chinese people with little explanation. James Wong proceeds to explain the safety procedures of the aircraft but entirely in Mandarin with exaggerated hand gestures while Sheldon can interpret little of it. He simply watches blankly as he tries to disassociate from the events around him. Wong's funny performance combined with Arkin's Buster Keaton-esque reactions was hilarious.

It's a funny movie and a fun adventure that escalates towards its ending. I chuckled through most of it, laughed out loud occasionally, and enjoyed the experience. I just wish it had started differently.

peter faulk and alan arkin make a great comedy,team, because they counterbalance each other. With a great script and a very funny adjoining cast of characters, arkin and falk takes us to a various locales and absurd locations to show a great talent of comedic timing between the two of them one being a dentist and the other, a character of enigmatic qualities. Have to see this one.

This is, as you have read in other reviews, a great movie. My reason for writing this review is not to review the movie, you can read that in other reviews, but to let you know that the DVD is so much better than the VHS (I bought the VHS copy a couple of months before the DVD was available for pre-order, because I didn't think it would be coming out on DVD). That said, the banter between the Peter Falk and Alan Arkin is really great, and at some point, you will find yourself quoting parts of the movie. My wife, who does not like "these kinds of movies" laughed throughout the entire film. Anyway, get the DVD and give the VHS away, that's what I did.

This may be one the most underrated comedies ever made. This movie has made me laugh out loud each of the many times I have seen it. One of the things that makes it really special, however, is that this would be a good movie even if it never had a funny line. The reason is that it is simply a great story. The plot is full of twists and turns, and leaves you surprised at the end. This alone would make this movie a "7." Add the numerous laughs, and this movie becomes an undenible "10."

This is truly one of the most under-appreciated comedies of all time. Peter Falk and Alan Arkin are magnificent. It was shamed by the abhorrent re-make/re-visit of 2003. Don't judge this original by that pathetic after birth. Two scenes stand out as 'need to see.' The first meeting between Falk and Arkin and the subsequent dinner has many a classic line, 'Beaks? The flies had beaks?' and 'There's tremendous red-tape in the bush.' The landing in Tihara and the car chase that follows including the famous 'Serpentine!' sequence makes me laugh out loud with every viewing. 'They make a chicken sandwich. They heat it up, serve it on a hard roll, with orange juice or pineapple juice, y'know grande, a big one. And coffee. Espresso with that wonderful foam. Oh Jesus Pigs!'

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, treat yourself to this classic. If you like Monty Python, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and the like, you will absolutely enjoy The In Laws.

A masked gang rob a Treasury Department armor truck and steals the printing plates. Vince Ricardo (Peter Falk) needs $1.5 million by tomorrow for the plates but his son is getting married. The bride's father is mild-mannered dentist Sheldon Kornpett (Alan Arkin) and the family has never met Vince. After having the family dinner, Sheldon doesn't like Vince and tries to stop the wedding. Vince barges into Shelly's office and drags him out for 5 minutes. Vince convinces him to break into his office to get a bag while two armed goons are waiting outside. After a shootout, Vince tells him that he's actually CIA gone off the reservation to run his own operation. He had stolen the plates to lure out South American cartel who had stolen plates of other currencies and intends to create hyper inflation making the South American debts worthless. The Feds find a plate in Shelly's basement left there by Vince and the two go off on an even wilder adventure in South America.

The plot is convoluted. The characters are irrational. It makes no sense that Shelly would do anything for Vince after trying to stop the wedding. The whole operation makes no sense. It makes even less sense that Shelly would follow Vince's lead in anything. It would be a completely pointless movie if not for Alan Arkin. He's great as scared and flustering. Peter Falk is also good and their odd couple chemistry saves the movie.

Considering all the rave reviews, one would think this movie was something special. I found the film typical Hollywood garbage, incredibly bad on all levels, from a preposterous script to bad casting and unbearable acting (especially by Peter Falk). There is little sense of comic timing and most of the humor attempted is typical Jewish stick, which Arkin overdoes. So why is a dentist in N>Y> living in a mansion that looks like San Simeon, why would he run off on various errands for his imbecilic future in law when he knows hes nuts, and the list goes on. Its not enough to say that this is the point of the film, or some other idiotic rationalization. A good comedy must have some sense of reality to play off, must have an intelligent script, and must have some pathos underlying the comedy. This film, in the inglorious American movie tradition of the last 40 years (with a few exceptions: My Cousin Vinny, Tootsie)is predictably stupid and unfunny unless you believe the zenith of comedy is Neil Simon or Woody Allen. I gave the film one star for some of Arkin's deadpan and another for the possibility the film got better after I turned it off.

When I was 10 years old, my family and I went to see "The In-Laws" in Florida, and we all had so much fun laughing and howling. Peter Falk and Alan Arkin are such a perfect pair in this classic comedy and they are just so inimitable. Falk is the crazed CIA agent, Arkin is the meek dentist, together, when their children plan to marry, Arkin gets involved in Falk's espionage adventures south of the border. Character actor Richard Libertini, a familiar face to many comedies with his bald pate, thick beard, and zany accents, adds to the fun as the Latin dictator who makes hand gestures with eyemakeup and lipstick drawn to his hand to the two guys in one hilarious scene. The best line of the movie is "Serpentine!" Recently, I found on the internet that Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks are going to mimic these greats in an upcoming remake with the same title as the original. Many people posted messages that they were outraged that the regularly dramatic Douglas and the dryly funny Brooks are not only reprising their roles, but also poorly copying them. Audiences at previews were equally angry and predict that the remake will fall flat on its face and there just will never, ever be another Falk and Arkin. Every actor has his/her own persona, and it is highly forced and unnatural when one actor tries to duplicate another actor's persona.

The In-Laws is definitely not a movie for anyone keen on particulars. Like most of Arthur Hiller's work, it is, at best, a cheerful muddle, and it gets off to a mucky start. A Federal security truck is robbed, with the theft engineered by Peter Falk. But hold on a sec. The truck is resplendent with money, and the thieves don't even want it. They're after something else. This is the first of a few new creases.

It's dinnertime, and Falk and Arkin are meet for the first time. Arkin's daughter is to be married just a day or two later to the mastermind's son, though much will transpire between now and then. Falk is somewhat vague about his work. But he talks about Guatemala, tells some stories about giant tse-tse flies. The next day, he's more frank: he mentions he's with the CIA. That probably accounts for the autographed picture of JFK in his office, a picture that involves something he did in Cuba.

Very soon, Falk has Arkin mixed up in a Federal crime and aboard a small plane with a two-man Chinese crew. Soon they're in a Carribbean hotel, with a lobby beset with live chickens. Then they're visiting a friend of Falk's, a crazy General, whose art collection Arkin is softly warned to appreciate. Further script elements incorporate stolen US treasury mint, gangland thugs, and a South American dictatorship and its unhinged leader who channels Mr. Garrison qualities and is played by the too hilarious Richard Libertini.

Andrew Bergman has written a comedy script that accelerates gradually and crisply, and endows its leads with great clear-cut farce, so that even if the material falters, the manic on-screen presence of able comic actors will be all we could ask of it. For instance, Arkin is one of the funniest men in the movies, and most of his most side-splitting moments come from the pure spontaneity of his reactions to what happens to him, which is not something a script could provide. Only an actor. Under Hiller's simplistic and satisfactory direction, everything keeps going swiftly enough to stump audience misgivings about plotting, aggravatingly inconsistent character development and a briskly condensed time frame.

This movie is absolutely hysterical. And I do not mean very funny. I mean it is hysterical.

The plot is that a CIA operative and a dentist, played superbly and respectively by Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, are about to become in-laws because their two children are to be married. But Falk, about to retire from his clandestine duties, needs Arkin's help to pull off one final mission. From beginning to end the antics of these two will leave you in side-splitting humor. And the performance by Richard Libertini as a South American dictator is equal to Falk and Arkin's contribution to this classic comedy.

If you want to see an intelligent and realistic film that is extremely funny from start to finish then this is it. Don't miss it!

According to IMDB's trivia, Premiere Magazine listed this among their '50 best comedies ever'....though after seeing the movie, I have no idea why. Sure, it's a nice film but nothing more. And, with my expectations set that high, I felt a tad disappointed.

A young couple are getting married. Unfortunately, the groom's father, Vince (Peter Falk) comes off as a real weirdo and the bride's father, Sheldon (Alan Arkin), thinks Vince is a real flake. What he doesn't know is that he's also very dangerous and soon involves Sheldon in an international plot to destroy the world's economy....via a weird dictator in the land of Tijada and with the help of the CIA.

This buddy comedy is pleasant but I remember no deep belly laughs. This is NOT to fault the movie makers....they did a decent job. Overall, worth seeing...just don't expect as much as you might have been led to believe.

Watched it again this weekend and laughed as hard - no, harder - than the previous 20 viewings! What is it about this movie? It gets FUNNIER every time. Oh sure, everyone comments here about the biggest laugh: Serpentine! Arguably one of the funniest in film history. But there are SO MANY great lines and moments: "There's no reason to shoot at me, I'm a dentist!" "Left turn at The General Garcia Toll Bridge...it's a fitting tribute general...yes, much better than a statue." "We have no blindfolds senor, we are a poor country." Vince: "from here on in it's very cut and dry." Shelley: "it's not cut. it's not dry." How about Shelley's expression as the general pours cold water into his own hand to calm down his agitated friend? And the airline safety instructions delivered by Billy (or is it Bing?) in Chinese. IT JUST GOES ON AND ON! Tell everyone you know, don't go see the remake - rent the original!

"The script is best at contrasting Vince and Sheldon's personalities, in particular, underlining Sheldon's "fish-out-of-water"reluctancy, incredulity, shock when his life is ceaselessly put on the line (the life-saving serpentine walk bit is sidesplitting). Arkin (R. I. P. Legend, who just passed away this year) is divertingly proficient to play miffed and catatonic, even his cranky outburst is infused with a ghost of drollness. Falk, on the other side, is all chummy and sincere albeit his spy-like identity, oblivious of any danger and plays a straight face with great alacrity, his Vince can charm you into doing anything that is unconscionable, no wonder Sheldon cannot help but acquiesce in this unlooked-for thrill ride that almost gets him executed on a foreign land. It is alluring to experience a death-defying hog-wild excursion to enliven one's mundane life, and vicariously, for us bums on seats, such allure can never be oversold."

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The In Laws could use some improvement. The secondary dialog could have been clever and interesting, but instead seems like filler. And the secondary acting is merely adequate.

What makes The In Laws worth watching is the interaction between Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, two great actors. It is the yin and the yang, the hot and the cool. And when you listen to them, particularly early on, it seems like improv. They really are reacting to each other.

The plot is a bit contrived, and makes little pretense of realism after awhile. But it works. You really don't know what, exactly, Falk is doing, and which side he is on, or even whether he is just crazy. That is fundamental to the movie.

Once they arrive in South America the roots of the movie become clear. This is a revamping of ideas from Woody Allen's Bananas - 1971, particularly the crazy dictator, and the American accidentally caught up in Banana Republic politics. Then the style of The Inlaws makes sense: the lightweight acting, the silliness and absurdity. It is a genre where the bar is set fairly low, but not as low as some of the so-called comedies that followed.

My favorite part, aside from the banter between Falk and Arkin, is the bit where James Hong gives a one-on-one "flight attendant" spiel to Arkin in Chinese.

Of course, Richard Libertini is great as the cracked general.

Peter Falk and Alan Arkin are an absolutely killer combination in this over-the-top comedy. The writer who helped pen "Blazing Saddles," Andrew Bergman, is back in a solo effort this time that downplays the profanity and adult situations of that earlier classic for a family-friendly outing that loses none of its bite or wit.

For me, this film carries the same buttoned-down lunacy of a great Bob and Ray routine, only sustained for 90 minutes, with hardly a sagging line or note. Get through the first five minutes, a fairly routine armored car robbery and a protracted stairwell run, and you will not be sorry, because the rest of "The In-Laws" is so funny, it will take you three or four eager viewings before you appreciate just how brilliant beyond belief it is. At least that's what happened with me.

It's a strangely genial film, its approach personified in Peter Falk's "friend of the world" interpretation of Vince Ricardo. There's nothing that phases him, or is too minute to warrant some breezily cheery comment, like "Is this coffee freeze-dried? It's very good." Or "The benefits [for belonging to the CIA] are terrific. The trick is not to get killed. That's the whole key to the benefits package."

Ricardo's approach is exemplified in an apron he is seen wearing at a barbeque: "I'm loaded with options." That he is, and screenwriter Bergman, too. In a somewhat desultory but still necessary DVD commentary for "In-Laws" fanatics like me, it is revealed by Bergman and director Arthur Hiller reveal the key moment for the screenplay is a fairly straight and jokeless scene between Alan Arkin's Dr. Kornpett and his daughter, where she urges him not to reject Ricardo because of his subliminated sexual jealousy about losing his daughter to Ricardo's son in marriage. Okay, maybe that does read funny, but it doesn't come across as funny.

The way the scene works, once the hapless dentist hears this, he is screwed. He has to help out Ricardo, in an inane flight from the government into the arms of the only Latin American dictator who's national flag features a topless woman, and whose apparent deputy is a Senor Wences hand puppet. You just follow along the same way Dr. Kornpett does, never knowing what to expect next, and, unlike him, enjoying it all the way through.

This film isn't laughs for everyone. Senator Jesus Braunsweiger's next-of-kin and BMW enthusiasts will find plenty to mourn. But for everyone else seeing it for the first time, it will be a joy forever, and a bit of a puzzlement: Why isn't this comedy better-known? Why don't people quote it as readily as "Caddyshack," "The Blues Brothers" or other lesser, contemporary fare?

One last thing: Alan Arkin's performance is maybe the best thing in the movie. I only realized this after repeat viewings. He's not the funniest comic actor around, frankly I never found his stuff that good in the other films of his I've seen, but here he makes the thing work. I wanted to say something about this containing the best straight-man work since Bud Abbott, but the more I see it, the less I'm sure who's the straight man. So many of the great lines are his: "There are flames on my car." "Flies with beaks?" "A Zee? A Zee?" "What flow? There isn't any flow." And to think his first line in the movie is a complaint about the viscosity of his dental bibs.

Just shut me up and go see it already. Or see it again. There's worse things you could do with your time, and not much better.

This is a movie that definitely has its moments. I have to give credit to Peter Falk, who put on a very strong performance as Vince Ricardo, a CIA agent whose son is getting married to the daughter of a pretty straight-laced dentist (Dr. Kornpett - Alan Arkin) who has trouble dealing with his future in-law's apparent eccentricities but ends up on a mission with him in Central America. The car chase scene is one of the better car chases I can remember in a movie, and the scene when Ricardo and Kornpett end up in front of the firing squad is worth a few laughs. I did think that Arkin came across as a bit too low-key in this movie (although he also had his moments) and to me the movie really weakened once they arrived in Central America and began to deal with a truly bizarre (to the point of being unbelievable) general (Richard Libertini) who has come up with a plan to print all the US currency he could possibly ever want.

It's largely fun to watch this, although to be honest I thought this was one of the few occasions when I would say that the remake (the really over the top 2003 version with Michael Douglas in Falk's role) was actually both stronger and funnier than the original. Still, there's nothing particularly wrong with this. It's a fun movie that will keep you entertained. 6/10

I do not want to be too harsh because perhaps when this movie was filmed some scenes that are too familiar in today's American movies were somehow original, but even so I believe that by 1979 it was quite common to see American movies with cars chasing each other and so on. But leaving that aside, it is quite difficult to swallow that an educated dentist would accept leaving his office in the middle of an intervention to make a favour to a guy that he hardly knew. And this is how all begins. So, the script has an original sin... Nevertheless, there are some good gags and a very good performance by Alan Arkin. And of course, the usual display of utter ignorance of Americans about the culture of the other American countries. For instance to make the Hondureans speak Spanish as if they were Mexicans.