Mamma, ho trovato un fidanzato

Country girl Rebecca Warner (Carla Gugino) from South Dakota starts college in Los Angeles. Her parents (Lane Smith, Cindy Pickett) are shocked by the wild liberal atmosphere. Her father is especially concerned about the resident adviser Crawl (Pauly Shore) living across the hall. Crawl takes care of homesick Becca and they become best friends. Another shock for the family happens when Becca returns home for the Thanksgiving break with Crawl and a whole new look. Her boyfriend Travis tries to propose. She pushes Crawl to help but he comes up with a bad lie that they're already engaged.

Pauly Shore can either be fun or be very annoying. He certainly has many detractors. I think he's fun in this one more than anything annoying. He's very good at being a fish out of water. Most importantly, he's not a simple slacker. He tries to fit in which is endearing. The story is fine. Overall, there is more good than bad as long as one is not an automatic Pauly Shore hater.

The annoying Pauly Shore befriends college freshman Carla Gugino in Los Angeles and then goes back to the country with her for Thanksgiving (he was invited because he had no one to spend the holiday with). Gugino's home-town boyfriend proposes marriage and she tries to discourage him by saying she is really engaged to Shore (a complete lie of course). Naturally the family is not crazy about Shore to begin with, but slowly they start to accept him and his strange California ways. Another one of those endless fish-out-of-water films that is more tedious than entertaining. Still probably the best Pauly Shore film yet (that is not saying much at all though). 2 stars out of 5.

I didn't expect much when I decided to watch this movie, so I was surprised to find myself thoroughly enjoying it. A couple of scenes had me laughing almost uncontrollably. The characters were engaging (no pun intended); however, the story is predictable. The fun of it comes from watching Crawl (Shore's character), a ditzy-yet-wise California dude a country college girl brings home for Thanksgiving, trying in his awkward (yet endearing) way to fit in to their lifestyle. I was also surprised that in all this there was a message. If you have a chance, see this movie!

Despite myself, I really kinda like this movie. Pauley Shore is invariably laugh-out-loud funny, and here is no exception. He is just excellent at playing the weirdo with a heart of gold.

His performance in this, although nothing out of the ordinary for him, is so good, it seems to lift other cast members' performances. Perhaps this is because he's the kind of guy it's easy to bounce off of.

The clichés about country life in this movie are hilarious and the way Shore's "city boy", Crawl is so at odds with the way of life, is funny too, but it's not only he who's a fish out of water; comedy also comes from the fact, that to any "ordinary" person or people, Crawl is a freakish nightmare of a person. That's why this movie works in such a great way: we love Crawl, he's a breath of fresh air, but we can also sympathise with the Warners. He is one hell of a culture shock.

Although this movie is classic Pauley Shore, so there's no great brain power needed to enjoy the movie, enjoy it you do, and there's even a "never judge a book by it's cover" type moral here somewhere. Not bad, not bad at all.

Son In Law didn't do so hot in the box office, but that only means the masses were wrong. This movie is one of the few movies that Pauly Shore really excels in, with some of the funniest lines I've ever heard. Although the ending is sub-par, the antics of Shore carries the movie.