The In-Laws (2003) - Movie Review

Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks star in the remake The In-Laws, a mildly entertaining yet somewhat unfulfilling comedy that never is bad but is rarely ever very good.

The In-Laws features Douglas as an offbeat and somewhat crazy CIA Agent who unwittingly recruits his son's future father-in-law (Brooks) into a plot to sell a nuclear submarine to a psychotic arms dealer. While Brooks tries fruitlessly to escape the plot, the arms dealer falls in love with him - literally. Also, there's that little ceremony coming up called the wedding.

The two leads are as funny as they can be, both seemingly having fun with the goofy script and story. Nevertheless, it is evident that they are straining at times to extract something really genuine out of the screenplay; The In-Laws has some good jokes, but it also has a lot that fall flat on their faces.

When all is said and done, The In-Laws is a fun and relatively harmless movie that has content acceptable for the whole family. On that count, it succeeds. Still, it hardly has enough material to warrant a remake, let alone to be its own film.

There are many worse films out there than The In-Laws, but there are many better ones as well.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.