Two 1970s comedies from the two poles of the Cold War, Arthur Hiller’s THE IN-LAWS, which would spawn a naff 2003 remake directed by Andrew Fleming and starring Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks, belongs to the odd-buddy genre that bundles two disparate fathers-in-law together and throws them onto a fun-studded, border-crossing escapade; while in USSR, Leonid Gaidai’s IVAN VASILYEVICH CHANGES HIS PROFESSION is a silly slapstick trades on well-worn tropes like time travel and mistaken identities. In THE IN-LAWS, Vince Ricardo (Falk), a secret CIA agent and Sheldon "Shelly" Kornpett (Arkin), a Manhattan dentist, are soon-to-be in-laws with their respective offspring’s pending matrimony. Shelly has some reservations about Vince, who pretends to be a busy businessman but acts like a blowhard. Unbeknownst to Shelly, Vince is pressed to foil a scheme of worldwide currency inflation conceived by a Central American general. By quirk of fate, he drags a grudging Shelly along as his companion in the pursuit of this noble mission. All’s well that ends well and it is a no brainer that the two of them will not miss the wedding ceremony, you bet their entrance can leave onlookers thunderstruck. The script is best at contrasting Vince and Sheldon’s personalities, in particular, underlining Sheldon’s “fish-out-of-water”reluctancy, incredulity, shock when his life is ceaselessly put on the line (the life-saving serpentine walk bit is sidesplitting). Arkin (R.I.P. legend, who just passed away this year) is divertingly proficient to play miffed and catatonic, even his cranky outburst is infused with a ghost of drollness. Falk, on the other side, is all chummy and sincere albeit his spy-like identity, oblivious of any danger and plays a straight face with great alacrity, his Vince can charm you into doing anything that is unconscionable, no wonder Sheldon cannot help but acquiesce in this unlooked-for thrill ride that almost gets him executed on a foreign land. It is alluring to experience a death-defying hog-wild excursion to enliven one’s mundane life, and vicariously, for us bums on seats, such allure can never be oversold. Hiller’s direction is precise, efficient, if nothing too memorable, and barring a facetiously beaming Richard Libertini as the General, whose weird accent and hand gimmick are top-notch gags, no one from the supporting cast is offered enough scenery to chew, especially the fairer sex is woefully stereotyped and untapped. THE IN-LAWS is almost a blokey pap, saved only by a modicum of zest entrained by Falk and Arkin’s uncannily bonhomous chemistry, a “bromance” avant la lettre.

IVAN VASILYEVICH CHANGES HIS PROFESSION pokes fun at the time travel nonsense, it looks more akin to THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (1963) than THE TIME MACHINE (1960), with all the alembics and colorful swilling liquids. And the special effects to actualize the travel per se are make-do effort of image-blurring-distorting-dissolving and montage-splicing, a technique doesn’t age well but must be novel to see at then as the film is a boffo crowd-pleaser upon release. The subjects switched by the machine are the notorious Ivan the Terrible and his look-alike, an anal-retentive building superintendent Ivan Vasilievich Bunsha (both played by Yakovlev, alternating between alpha and beta male personalities with moderation). So in the present day, Ivan the Terrible gets to acquaint himself with mod cons and a modern world four centuries after his time, not that the film allows him to go out of the main building where lives the scientist Shurik (Demyanenko, indeed a variation on Jerry Lewis’s nerdy persona, but less objectionable). An encounter with Shurik’s wife Zinaida (Seleznyova) and her lover, film director Yakin (a smarmy and incredulous Pugovkin) reassures him that his repute doesn’t lost on posterity. In the paralleled universe of the 16th century, Bunsha and burglar George Miloslavsky (Kuravlyov, quite a cock of the walk) must brave themselves to evade their chasers in the royal court (the pace is fast-edited and the music is merrily pellucid) and then with Bunsha pretending to be the Tsar, they revel in the full royal treatment until their shenanigans are discovered. It is a high farce but the gags run to insipid. For the final touch, Shurik seems to restore the balance back in both worlds after a flurry of confusion and hubbub, but Gaidai’s film impishly suggest could it be castles in the air or some magic conjured up by the black cat? Zinaida comes back as if the prior break-up doesn’t happen, everything is tickety-boo. Both pictures are daydreams pandering to a masculine mindset while leaving the opposite sex on the sideline, unlike in USA where an ordinary citizen can have a ball overcoming a military lord in a Third World country, without an inkling of worry about his daughter’s prospective wedding ceremony, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, a fanciful invocation of a past Tsar to the present day cannot really tally with Communism’s materialistic precept. that may well explain IVAN VASILYEVICH CHANGES HIS PROFESSION’s equivocal ending, a non sequitur to get the filmmakers off the hook of any draconian censorship, an effective means could and would be applied for future films. referential entries: Hiller’s THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS (1970, 4.4/10); Terence Young’s DR. NO (1962, 6.4/10); Karen Shakhnazarov’s ZEROGRAD (1988, 7.7/10); Jerry Lewis’s THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (1963, 5.7/10); George Pal’s THE TIME MACHINE (1960, 6.4/10).

Title: The In-LawsYear: 1979Genre: Comedy, Adventure, ActionCountry: USALanguage: English, Spanish, CantoneseDirector: Arthur HillerScreenwriter: Andrew BergmanMusic: John MorrisCinematography: David M. WalshEditor: Robert SwinkCast:Peter FalkAlan ArkinRichard LibertiniNancy DussaultPenny PeyserArlene GolonkaMichael LembeckEd Begley Jr.James HongDavid PaymerPaul L. SmithCarmine CaridiRating: 6.8/10English Title: Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His ProfessionOriginal Title: Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyuYear: 1973Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Sci-FiCountry: Soviet UnionLanguage: Russian, GermanDirector: Leonid GaidaiScreenwriters: Leonid Gaidai, Mikhail A. Bulgakov, Vladlen BakhnovMusic: Aleksandr ZatsepinCinematography: Vitali Abramov, Sergei PoluyanovEditor: Klavdiya AleyevaCast:Yuriy YakovlevLeonid KuravlyovAleksandr DemyanenkoSaveliy KramarovNatalya SeleznyovaMikhail PugovkinNatalya KrachkovskayaVladimir EtushSergey FilippovNina MaslovaNatalya KustinskayaRating: 6.9/10