This week we are looking at the Pauly Shore fish out of water comedy, SON IN LAW, and of course, asking the question, Was Ebert Right?
Ebert's review starts off explaining the plot of the film and establishing the characters while giving us a good feel for what we have instore. He even gives us the definition of the term "fish out of water", which is nice for his more casual readers. Everything seems to be going ok until he gets to the character of Crawl, played by Pauly Shore.
But it doesn’t much matter, because they’re all upstaged by Crawl, played by Pauly Shore as one of the more tiresome movie characters of recent months.
It is clear from the getgo that Ebert is not a fan of Pauly Shore or the character he plays here. He describes Crawl as "one of the most tiresome movie characters of recent months." I have to say he isn't. Sure, Pauly Shore was an aquired taste, as he was pretty weird, but the character isn't tiresome. He is actually a really good person who is different because he chose to be. It also doesn't seem like the people around him at school find him tiresome. No one makes fun of him or the way he goes about life. In fact, during the Halloween party, his room is filled with people who are disappointed when he asks them to leave.
This story was never going to be great moviemaking, but it might have been more palatable if Shore had been able to make Crawl even marginally likable.
Crawl is likeable. Like I said before, he is a good person. He takes Becca under his wing and shows her that there is more to life than the simple life she grew up in. He gets her new clothes, a new hairstyle, and even a tattoo, but doesn't force any of this change on to her. He lets her find her style and he encourages her along the way.
He also doesn't try to sleep with her. He knows she has a boyfriend back home and he respects that. A lesser film would have had him try time and time again to get in her pants, but Crawl isn't about that. He doesn't want to corrupt her. He wants her to find the person she wants to be much like he did when he started college.
Crawl is weird but we go with it. We like him because of the good nature he has. Adam Sandler in LITTLE NICKY is a comletely unlikeable character based on his voice alone. That acting choice alone makes him unbearable to watch but Crawl is able to drop his schtick from time to time in order to get his point across. Sandler never drops the voice because that is how the character speaks and it is grating.
Since we don’t like him and can’t stand him, why should we hope that he’ll prevail? He’s one of those narcissistic cool guys who speaks in a monotone and thinks it is funny to insult people, and who is even more curdling when he tries to be nice to them.
We want to see Crawl prevail because he is a good person. He is not a narcissist like Ebert characterizes as. He isn't full of himself and he tries to relate to the family and their lifestyle. He wants to learn what it takes to be a farmer and does his best with the challenges presented to him. He even prevails at many of them. There is the scene with the tractor, or whatever that machine is called, but that is one scene. In other scenes he is helping the family out with their problems and even helps the parents get their groove back. Sure, he insults people, I guess, but they are never mean-spirited. He isn't trying to hurt feelings. He is trying to break his way into Becca's life and sometimes he fails. We all do. We don't find it "curdling" when he is trying to be nice. We like that he is a nice person.
The movie has a couple of laughs, mostly thanks to the kid brother. Its warmhearted scenes fail badly, because we do not for a second believe that Rebecca ever loved her first boyfriend, or even could love Crawl.
The warmedhearted scenes don't fail. They feel very genuine. There might be a few that are overdone but for the most part we like the wholesomeness. The film could have been harsher and more mean-spirited but the filmmakers wisely chose to go the wholesome route and the film is better for it.
As for Becca not loving her first boyfriend, I think he might be right on this point but I do believe she did before she went off to college. I think her awakening showed her that he wasn't the person she thought he was. She doesn't want to get married and especially not to him. She realises during the course of the film that the marriage would not be a happy one and she avoids it like the plauge. Her parents, especially her dad, wants it to happen but she is too busy living life to abandon it to live a life where she is not happy.
Do we believe she loves Crawl? No, and the film never wants us to believe it. The engagement between Becca and Crawl is fake. He says it to get the boyfriend off her back, and he probably saw a bit of joy in embarrassing the boyfriend in front of everyone. We also know they are not meant to be a couple because we never get the knowing glances of either of them watching each other while they do something like we get in all romantic comedies. This is not a romantic comedy. It is a fish out of water film.
The movie might have had a chance if it had abandoned all the false sentiment and simply acknowledged Crawl as the cretin he is.
Again, Crawl is not a cretin. He is a good person with a good heart.
This is how the review ends. So, was Ebert right?
Hell no, but I can see why he thinks the way he does. Ebert has never been a fan of weird characters. His hate for many of Adam Sandlers early characters from BILLY MADISON, HAPPY GILMORE, THE WATERBOY, and the aforementioned LITTLE NICKY is well documented, so there was not chance he would like Pauly Shore. He doesn't like him in any of the films he has reviewed and that is ok. Like I said before, Pauly Shore was an aquired taste. He was a bit too weird for many people but his target audience, teenagers, liked him well enough. His characters are good natured, maybe not the ones in JURY DUTY or BIO-DOME, but those are different stories that I might cover in the future (probably not BIO-DOME as that film is beyond terrible and would be torture for me to watch again)
I love SON IN LAW. I love the sweet nature of the film. The family, Becca, and Crawl are nice people and we like being around them. The boyfriend is an awful person with us hating him from the start. We know he is going to be evil and we are just waiting for it to happen. We want good things to happen to the family and Crawl and bad things to happen to the boyfriend.
The film is also pretty damn funny with the biggest laugh coming when the boyfrined punches Crawl in the face after the failed proposal. Shore sells the reaction just right and it always makes me laugh.
I always have a smile on my face when I watch SON IN LAW and always look forward to watching it every year. The film isn't perfect but it isn't trying to be. I wants to entertain us and I think it succeeds. The film also doesn't feel like it belongs in the 90s. Sure, there are some things that are very 90s but I think the film can be watched today without it being a time capsule. I wholeheartedly recommend SON IN LAW and I am looking forward to revisiting the film in 2027.
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