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-Laws
Year: 1979
Genre: Comedy, Adventure, Action
Country: USA
Language: English, Spanish, Cantonese
Director: Arthur Hiller
Screenwriter: Andrew Bergman
Music: John Morris
Cinematography: David M. Walsh
Editor: Robert Swink
Cast:
Peter Falk
Alan Arkin
Richard Libertini
Nancy Dussault
Penny Peyser
Arlene Golonka
Michael Lembeck
Ed Begley Jr.
James Hong
David Paymer
Paul L. Smith
Carmine Caridi
Rating: 6.8/10
English Title: Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession
Original Title: Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyu
Year: 1973
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Country: Soviet Union
Language: Russian, German
Director: Leonid Gaidai
Screenwriters: Leonid Gaidai, Mikhail A. Bulgakov, Vladlen Bakhnov
今年电影课上的第一部苏联电影，和沙皇同名的小官员，意外穿越互换身份搞出的一出啼笑皆非的闹剧。很有意思的是这位冒牌沙皇尽管坐上了沙皇的宝座却依然白痴懦弱，前期完全受那位小偷同伴的摆布，签个出战文书还哆哆嗦嗦要写个申请书因为自己无权签署历史文件，一脸褶子的瑞典外交官蹦蹦跶跶地来要地他也乐呵呵傻乎乎地给，只有看到沙皇后宫的时候不含糊，一口伏特加一口美女。相比之下穿越到现代一脸委屈的沙皇形象反而更可爱一点，尽管脾气暴躁一如其名但却是个雷厉风行讲原则有气概的人物。不知道该说是地位塑造人还是什么样的人就会在什么样的地位上。不过得感慨一句苏联电影还是敢拍啊，这种说不出是黑谁夸谁的感觉有点微妙。
背景黑幕中犯困的男人，偶然看见自己的手后大叫，就这样开场了。nn破墙与“破墙”：时光机破墙是穿越，一道墙消失，两边的人相见，片中人物疯狂“破墙”，这大概是破墙最多的电影了。nn一个处处都要禀告有关部门的公务员，在经历了这样一场风波之后，也变得肆意妄为了，待他回到现实世界之后，这种人性的转变一定是绝佳的笑料。nnn小商贩衣服下的全套零件。nn古代演员演自己的后设性，虽然从根本上也是表演，但被认为最为逼真。nn总串场疯狂打电话炫耀的二等女演员。nn小偷真是太适合穿越了，偷不同时代的东西带到另外的时代，这与送不同，而且偷东西的人处于另一个时空，根本找不到了。nn现实黑白，实验失败；梦境彩色，实验成功。nn最后越闹越大，叫来警察。nn现代警察与古代军队，福柯的寓言，时间变了，可一切仍是那么相似。nn医生一直在说车轱辘话，是先卖惨后恶心邻里的内种，车轱辘话里也饱含戏剧性。nn最后的破墙，虽然实验失败了，但黑白的现实世界仍有美好，妻子还是爱他的。
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).