Le gendre

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.

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.

Before I saw "Son In Law" I only had a vague idea who Pauly Shore was. Now I know. He is a superb comedic actor. In this movie he plays "Crawl", an upperclassman dorm counselor, who is a bit eccentric. He meets freshman "Becka" from South Dakota and they become fast friends. He helps her break out of her small town mold. In a Thanksgiving visit to her parents' home, he pretends to be her fiancee to save her embarassment of a sort with an old boyfriend.

I loved two things about this movie. Pauly Shore and the comedic situations are the first. The second is the message. How generations of "men" had perpetrated the same offenses against each other, and "Crawl" helps them see a better way to treat each other. He gets Becka's mom also to feel "alive" again, and rekindles romance between the parents.

The whole movie is a fresh approach to comedy, is a joy to watch. I rate it a strong 7 of 10.

Shore remains one of the mysteries of film history. Looking like what would result if Richard Simmons and Weird Al Yankovic had a child together, he is the unlikeliest of movie stars. Yet somehow, for a time at least, he managed to carve out a career for himself as a comic leading man. This film is often cited as one of his least annoying, but even here he is sometimes hard to take. He plays a way-out, overaged college student who winds up coming home for the Thanksgiving holiday with a pretty freshman from the country. Once there he offends, then predictably wins over, her family and friends......most of them anyway. The film is undeniably predictable and familiar and the material is very slight. Yet somehow, in spite of its hurdles, it manages to entertain to a certain point and actually contains a few laughs. Shore, as agonizing as he is, does occasionally score a thoughtful moment or two among all the slapstick and crude language. Gugino is lovely. Her presence adds immeasurably to the overall geniality of the film. The actors portraying her family do a very nice job as well. Smith as the father is suitably outraged by Shore. Pickett adds dimension to a pretty standard role. The best are Renna and Adams. Renna plays the obnoxious younger brother role to the hilt. It would be hard to come up with a brattier persona, but he puts a fun spin on it. Adams get a late career gem of a part as the cantankerous grandfather and steals many of the scenes he is in. To the director's credit, none of these characters get shorted in their opportunity to present themselves. (In other words, Shore isn't the ENTIRE show here. The supporting cast gets to shine as well.) Also present are hunky Gauthier as Gugino's former boyfriend (often looking like Tom Cruise in "All the Right Moves") and sexy Thiessen as the local easy mark. The movie is already dated in terms of its clothing and other aspects. Shore gives Pickett a makeover and it's hard to see why anyone thinks she looks better than before! Fortunately, the thing doesn't drag on for too long. It's just a short, sometimes funny, sometimes sweet, sometimes stupid movie that is blessed with a few enjoyable performers and a refreshing lack of undue sex and drugs.