Classic Movie Review: 'Son in Law'

Son in Law (1993)

Directed by Steve Rash

Written by Fax Bahr, Adam Small, Shawn Schepps

Starring Pauly Shore, Carla Gugino, Lane Smith, Tiffani Amber Thiessen

Release Date July 2nd 1993

Published July 10th, 2003

I feel as if I need to apologize to my Everyone's a Critic 1993 podcast co-host M.J. Being a member of Gen-Z, M.J once lived in a world where they were blissfully unaware of the existence of Pauly Shore. Our podcast has ruined that for them. M.J is now fully aware of the existence of the man once known as 'The Weezil,' and they are forever changed by this knowledge. I'm reminded of how I managed to go for over a year of the Baby Shark phenomenon without ever hearing the viral tune, only to have a co-worker destroy my innocence and torment my mind via a shared office Alexa.

For M.J, the Everyone's a Critic 1993 Podcast has included learning about a movie star with a confusingly large penis, they've seen not one, but two, terrible films starring the eminently forgettable actor, Arye Gross, and now, they know of the existence of Pauly Shore thanks to a screening of the movie Son in Law. If they weren't of legal, adult age, honestly, I might be risking arrest for having shown my young friend such horrors in just a mere six months of reflecting on the movies of 1993.

Son in Law is a blisteringly terrible comedy in which the blindingly obnoxious Pauly Shore inflicts himself on everyone around him. Shore is a whirling dervish of a comic void that sucks in all of the good around him and then returns it all less beautiful, and entirely unfunny. With his irksome comic accent and bizarre language, Shore is what Adam Sandler would be if all of Sandler's characters were variations on Billy Madison. That's a hellscape I don't even want to imagine but there it is.

The threadbare premise of Son in Law finds Becca Warner (Carla Gugino), a small-town gal from South Dakota, moving to Los Angeles to attend college. Finding herself a small fish in a big pond, Becca becomes completely overwhelmed and plans to give up everything and go home. That's when her new Resident Advisor, Crawl (Pauly Shore), yes, his name is Crawl, you try and figure out why, Crawl steps in to keep her from giving up everything.

Crawl takes Becca under his obnoxious, oblivious wing, gets her new clothes and a new haircut, and generally treats her like the newest member of a cult. Truly, this is how Nxivm started. The end game of Son in Law is Shore and Gugino being arrested alongside one of the stars of Smallville. Okay, it's just a makeover and a tattoo, but it's still kind of weird how she changes every aspect of her life based on the advice on one defiantly weird guy.

The plot truly kicks in when Becca sees that Crawl has nowhere to go for Thanksgiving. Not wanting her guru to be alone for the holidays, she invites him to her home in South Dakota. And hijinks ensue. Or, that's what the movie would like us to believe. In reality, what we get are a series of strange scenes that begin and end seemingly at random. Attempts are made to tell jokes, but most scenes end with a thud and are terminated seemingly because no one on screen knows what else to do in the moment as a joke lay dying on the ground.

Ostensibly, this is your typical fish out of water story. A big city guy goes to a small town and has small town experiences. He gets overwhelmed and humiliated early on but proves himself capable as the story progresses. The only difference here is that Pauly Shore is the big city guy and Pauly Shore is so deeply weird that the familiar tropes are both overly familiar and freshly unfunny. It's as if Pauly Shore discovers fresh, new, ways to make the same old jokes bad in an entirely new way. It's almost impressive, really.

I will admit, when I was 15 or 16 years old, around the time Pauly Shore made a splash on MTV, and co-starred in Encino Man, I kind of enjoyed his schtick. But like any fad, it ran its course very, very quickly. Shore's moment in the sun lasted a couple of years and since then, he's clung sadly to the bottom rung of Hollywood, parasitically trading on his brief glimpse of superstardom in sad attempts to get young people to know who he is. Do yourself a favor and miss Shore's bitter, odd, stand up performances.

The most notable thing about Son in Law, for me, came from a behind the scenes anecdote on IMDB. For a brief shining moment in 1993, Pauly Shore was at the center of a bidding war between New Line and Disney. New Line wanted Shore for a fish out of water comedy in England, directed by Dennis Dugan, Adam Sandler's go to director. Disney wanted Shore for Son in Law and the two sides were forced to sit down in a board room with Pauly Shore and negotiate for his services. Eventually, Disney paid enough money to get Shore to commit to Son in Law, despite his preference for this other movie. Disney went on to buy the other movie and shelve it, as an extra added assurance that Shore belonged to them for Son in Law.

Can you even imagine, a boardroom of executives sitting across from Pauly Shore in a bidding war? Hollywood in the 90s was a crazy, insane, bizarre place. Fair play to Pauly Shore though for getting paid when he could. He managed to make some good money and, Son in Law, for as abysmal a movie as it is, did make a profit. On a small budget, the film made nearly 40 million dollars and guaranteed that Shore would be cast in several more leading roles before finally collapsing like the fad that he was, a sub-Jim Varney, Ernest like presence in our popular imagination, minus the recent cultural reappraisal that Varney has received.

Listen to us talk about Son in Law, and poor M.J's broken innocence, on the Everyone's a Critic 1993 podcast. Find it on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast feed, wherever you listen to podcasts. We've had a lot of fun assessing the movies of the 90's, 30 years later. It's fascinating to see how movies and popular culture have changed in just 30 years. With M.J's new eyes on these movies and my and Amy's fading memories of these movies, it's a weird, wonderful trip through time each week. Check it out, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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