Who wants to marry into this family?

Another of the movies that's been on my DVR for a while that I finally got around to watching is the 1979 version of The In-Laws.

The movie starts off in a way that makes you wonder what it has to do with in-laws. An armored car is driving when it's picked up by one of those powerful junkyard electromagnets and brought into the yard. There's a lot of cash in the back of the truck, but surprisingly, that's not what the robbers want. Somebody has stashed a couple of engravings from the US Mint, engravings that are used to create high-denomination currency. It seems obvious that if these engravings fell into the wrong hands, somebody could make a lot of money, although since these are bills over $100, which were no longer in general circulation after 1969, you have to wonder who.

Seemingly in on the plot is Vince Ricardo (Peter Falk). He is, in fact, one of the in-laws. He and wife Jean (Arlene Golonka) are the parents of Tommy (Michael Lembeck). Tommy is about to get married to Barbara Kompett (Penny Peyser), daughter of denist Sheldon Kompett (Alan Arkin) and Carol (Nancy Dussault). They live close enough together that you'd think they'd have met much earlier than just a few days before the wedding, but apparently not. And Dr. Kompett certainly doesn't know what Mr. Ricardo does.

That last bit isn't a surprise, since Vince works for the CIA, and not in one of those analysts' desk jobs, even though he's got enough service that he shouldn't have to be out in the field doing risky and physically demanding work. But it's what he likes. When the Ricardos visit the Kompetts' house, Vince requests getting up to make a phone call, which is in part to call a contact, and in part an excuse to hide one of the engravings in the basement so that Dr. Kompett will have to work with him.

Vince ropes Kompett into going to Vince's office to get a bag containing the other engravings, under the ruse that there are two gunmen who would like to kill Vince. Unfortunately, it's not a ruse, and the gunmen figure out that Kompett is there to get the bag. By this time, Mrs. Kompett has also found the engraving in the basement, and not realizing that it's authentic, takes it to the bank looking for guidance on what to do with it. This obviously sends a bunch of T-men to the Kompett place such that Dr. Kompett can't go back. They don't know about Vince's real reason for having taken the engravings -- if that reason even is real -- and even if they do, they're not about to let on that they do.

Vince's plan, at least as he tells it to Dr. Kompett, is to go down to a small Latin American island dictatorship called Tijada, run by insane Gen. Garcia (Richard Libertini). Garcia wants the engravings, as his plan is to use them, and engravings from other western economies, to create enough currency to inflate pretty much every economy and make those currencies worthless. (Politicians of today might want to take note of their profligate deficit spending since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and the resultant price rises it's causing.) Vince tells Kompett that the plan is to find out more about Garcia's modus operandi and specifically where the currency-printing operation is so that Western governments can stop it. Kompett, however, has good reason not to believe any of this, considering how much Vince has been lying to him already.

The In-Laws is a movie that certainly has some funny scenes, and definitely a funny premise. But it's also a movie with which I had some big problems. The first is that Vince is written as such an obnoxious character that you have to wonder what anybody would see in him, to the point of getting mixed up in international intrigue. Sheldon had an alibi for the heist, which took place in Washington, and if he hadn't seen Vince before the night Vince planted the engraving in the Kompetts' basement, then a good defense attorney ought to have been able to get him off at trial. And if Vince is obnoxious, Gen. Garcia is so over-the-top nuts that I really wanted to fast-forward every time he showed up on screen.

Still, there are a lot of people who find The In-Laws quite funny, so you might want to give it a try for yourself. (I haven't seen the remake, but apparently that one is well-liked, too.)