Son in Law (1993)

Pauly Shore is one of those people who I’ve never really liked, yet I’m curious to see all of his work.  I want to understand why he was such a force in the early 1990s.  The guy had an irritating personality, but his charisma seemed to propel him to movie stardom.  Movies like Bio-Dome, In the Army Now, Encino Man, and this week’s movie, Son in Law put him in the comedy spotlight.  I know his popularity stemmed partially from MTV.  Maybe the times were just different and he was what interested teens.  I don’t know.  I was barely a thing back then.

Speaking of Son in Law, let’s get into the actual movie instead of my rambling about the Pauly Shore popularity of the early 1990s.  Son in Law was a fairly simple movie, with a bunch for me to write about.  Rebecca Warner (Carla Gugino) went to Los Angeles for school.  When Thanksgiving came around, she brought her Resident Advisor, Crawl (Pauly Shore), home because he didn’t have anywhere to go for the holiday.  Antics ensued.

Son in Law consisted of two different fish out of water stories, with one being the introduction and the other being the bulk of the story.  The first was Rebecca’s trip to Los Angeles as she began her post-secondary schooling.  Rebecca was used to her farm town life in South Dakota and the Los Angeles lifestyle was a big change.  She was a country girl trying to survive in city life.  After a month of hiding in her dorm room and avoiding parties, she wanted to drop out of school.  Crawl changed that.  He convinced her to open up and try new things instead of isolating herself.

A major theme of Son in Law was compromise.  Though the comedic antics of Crawl and the aggressiveness of Rebecca’s family might have diluted it, the message was still there.  Be yourself while embracing other things.  Rebecca was still the caring person at the end of the movie that she had been at the beginning.  The only difference was that she had broken out of her shell.  She brought a new world to her family.  She relaxed and stopped being so uptight, as had her family.  They began to see other people’s lifestyles as equal to theirs.  They compromised and ended up somewhere in between where they began and where Crawl began.  There was still a little more country to them, but they were open to new lifestyle choices.

Examples of this could be seen in how Rebecca dressed at the beginning versus how she dressed after befriending Crawl.  Instead of her muted colours and old-fashioned dresses, Rebecca began wearing more colourful garments that were popular in the city.  Her father, Walter (Lane Smith), opened up to his son, Zack (Patrick Renna), instead of trying to model Zack after himself.  Rebecca’s mother, Connie (Cindy Pickett), started wearing makeup and feeling good about herself.  Everyone improved themselves for themselves by allowing different outlooks on life to affect them.

The other fish out of water story was Crawl going to South Dakota and learning about country living.  Crawl was entrenched in the city life of Los Angeles.  He always watched hot women on the beach, in the dorms, and everywhere around the city.  Not that the good looking ladies thing changed when he went to South Dakota.  But his lifestyle had been one of lazing around and taking in the attractive view.  When he got to South Dakota, Crawl quickly learned that there was work to be done.  The farm needed care in order to run properly.  He would need to learn how to work, rather than be his six years in college self.

This story also involved compromise.  Crawl began working by doing things the way that people wanted him to.  That involved being harassed by the farmhand, Theo (Dennis Buckley).  Crawl actually wanted to learn how to work on a farm.  He wanted to know how to milk the cows and feed the pigs.  He wanted to take out the machinery.  Crawl was open to learning as much as he could.  The thing he learned most was that to work at the best of his abilities, he would have to compromise.  He would have to find his own way of doing the jobs.

There were many examples of Crawl’s compromise throughout Son in Law.  To fill the troughs for the animals, Crawl figured that he would ski down a hill and cut holes in the feed bag.  As he skied past the troughs, the holes would pour feed into them.  When Theo tried to send a pig after Crawl for the second or third time, Crawl went with it instead of running away.  He began riding the pig.  He learned how to properly milk cows from Zack and he fixed fences.  Crawl learned how to farm through his own means.  He brought city mentality to farm mentality and blended the two.  He felt like a true country boy.

The only problem with the two fish out of water stories was how much Pauly Shore there was.  That was to be expected since the movie starred Pauly Shore.  The guy never felt right for a starring role.  He was a supporting actor who was pushed to the front when he shouldn’t have been.  Pauly Shore could have been a great comedic relief while other people did the heavy work of starring in the movies.  When he gets positioned as the lead actor, his shtick gets tiring.  Son in Law could have been stronger were the character played by someone else.

There are a few other, smaller beats about Son in Law that I want to make note of before we head out.  One of the running gags, which actually worked, was Crawl having random skills and knowledge because of the extended college time.  After six years, Crawl had majored in various different subjects that gave him handy talents.  The most notable one was karate, which he used at the end of the movie.

Son in Law had a solid cast of recognizable faces.  Pauly Shore was obviously a star at the time.  His romantic interest was Carla Gugino who would go on to many better projects.  Zack was Patrick Renna, who was in The Sandlot and The Big Green.  On the kids’ sports movie theme, Walter was played by Lane Smith, who was the rival coach in The Mighty Ducks.  He was also in My Cousin Vinny and Lois & Clark.  Then there was Tiffani-Amber Thiessen from Saved by the Bell as one of the other people in South Dakota.  There were more, for sure, but those are the ones that I noticed immediately (even if it took me some time to remember why I recognized Lane Smith).

The thing I most want to write about, though, is a story moment from late in the movie.  The whole premise of Son in Law stemmed from Rebecca not wanting to marry her boyfriend, Travis (Dan Gauthier).  She asked Crawl to do something to stop the proposal, and Crawl came up with the idea that he and Rebecca were already engaged.  Travis didn’t like this and punched Crawl in the face.  Things only got worse from there.  In the most villainous possible, Travis offered to throw Crawl a bachelor party.  He drugged Crawl and Tracy (Tiffani-Amber Thiessen), and put them in a compromising position to make it look like they had slept together.  It was a way to break up Crawl and Rebecca so that he could win Rebecca back.

What made the turn so strange was how Travis had seemed like one of the “good ol’ boys” living in the South Dakota countryside.  He went from the dependable hometown boyfriend to the jealous, vindictive person who would destroy other people’s lives to improve his own.  He also brought Theo into his plotting.  Theo had been pulling fairly harmless (outside of breaking a fence) farm pranks on Crawl.  Now he was moving into criminal activity.  This could have worked better had the extreme behaviour been better set up.  In this case, it seemed shocking for the characters to resort to drugging people.

That should do it for Son in Law.  It had promise that didn’t quite work.  The positioning of Pauly Shore as the lead, as well as a weird final turn held the movie back from becoming a great comedy.  It missed the mark just slightly.  Perhaps there is a remake out there somewhere that could find the right tone.  There could be something great with this concept.

Before we part ways for the week, here are some notes:

• Son in Law was suggested by @DerfelBarada.
• Pauly Shore made his fourth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Son in Law, after already having appeared in Bio-Dome, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, and Sandy Wexler.
• Patrick Renna was in Dorm Daze, which was covered early in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  He made his return to the blog with Son in Law.
• Son in Law was the second Sunday “Bad” Movie for Carla Gugino, who was also in New Year’s Eve.
• Finally, there was a brief appearance by Brendan Fraser in Son in Law.  He was in Furry Vengeance.
• Have you seen Son in Law?  What did you think of it?  What do you think of Pauly Shore?  You can discuss any of this stuff in the comments below.
• If there are any movies that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can let me know about them in the comments below, or on Twitter.  I’m always looking for movies I may not have thought of that I can toss into my schedule.
• Sometimes, when I’m watching bad movies, I will put clips of the movies into my snapchat story.  If that interests you in any way, or if you want to see random pictures that I accidentally put in there, you can add me.  My username is jurassicgriffin.
• The last thing I’m going to leave you with is a preview of next week.  What movie will I be watching?  I’m going to be revisiting a franchise that I first dipped my toe in back during the second year of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I will be watching a movie called The Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust.  It should be a fun one.  We’ll see next week when we all come back here and I put up some writing about it.  Until then, keep on watching what you want to watch.