Big Trouble (1986) User Reviews

Big trouble in front of and behind the cameras

[AlsExGal · 4/10 · 27 August 2016]

Writer-director Andrew Bergman and stars Peter Falk and Alan Arkin re-teamed after the success of their earlier collaboration The In-Laws with this misfire crime comedy.

Arkin plays an insurance agent who has triplet sons who are about to leave for Yale. He's struggling to find the money to pay for it when along comes seductress Beverly D'Angelo, who wishes to take out a large life insurance policy on her dying husband (Peter Falk). She convinces Arkin to help push through the policy in exchange for a cut of the pay-off. Charles Durning plays a wily insurance investigator who knows something fishy is afoot.

If this plot sounds familiar, this was meant as a take-off on Double Indemnity, although the second half goes off in a completely different direction. Columbia Pictures, which released this, ran into copyright trouble with Universal over the Indemnity similarities. Nice bet that Universal wouldn't notice the similarities, since they seem clueless about most of their classic catalog, but not Indemnity - so famous that even the suits at Universal knew the plot.

This was the beginning of this film's troubles, as the title proved to be all too prophetic. Tensions on the set became unbearable, and Andrew Bergman quit the movie about halfway through filming, as well as his producing partner, resulting in this film having no credited producers. Falk contacted his old friend John Cassavetes, who reluctantly came onboard and directed the remainder of the film. In fact, this ended up being Cassavetes' final directing credit. This isn't very funny or very interesting, and the script problems are obvious fairly early on. The performers try, but they don't have much to work with. This was barely released to theaters.

And what did Universal pictures get in return for the Columbia rehash of Double Indemnity? Columbia gave Universal an unused script they found inane and unworkable - a script titled "Back To the Future".

I wonder what Billy thought?

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 27 April 2016]

Long time buddies from Actor's Studio days John Cassavetes and Peter Falk collaborate on this humorous send up of Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. Wilder's whose humor could be grimly ironic was still around when Big Trouble came out. I wonder what Billy thought especially since Double Indemnity classic that it is has very few laughs.

It was one fateful day when Alan Arkin met up with Beverly D'Angelo who had that low cut come up and see me ambiance that got Arkin hooked. Up there for a homeowner's policy discussion, Arkin sells them a life insurance policy for husband Peter Falk with that ever fateful double indemnity clause for accidental death.

Our first meeting with Falk should tell you this won't work out quite like Double Indemnity did. Both he and D'Angelo like to live large, check out the mansion they have. And I won't say what it is that Falk does for a living to bring in the Benjamins, but trust me he's one shady character. In fact not unlike the man he played in my favorite Peter Falk movie The Brink's Job, but far more upper class or at least he's used to living like that.

Now a man used to privilege is Robert Stack, CEO of the insurance company that Arkin works for. Arkin's having trouble and who wouldn't paying tuition for his teenage triplets who MUST go to Yale to study music. Stack's a hearty and hateful privileged WASP snob who tells Arkin it's better that people make it on their own. No help from him getting into his birthright alma mater. After that Arkin is as easy prey for D'Angelo as Fred MacMurray was for Barbara Stanwyck in the original.

All I will say is that Big Trouble doesn't quite work out the way the original did. Funniest scene in the film for me is the Medical Examiner's office where the post mortem is conducted by Dr. Richard Libertini who is in on the plot and who's a character himself. The Edward G. Robinson insurance investigator role is Charles Durning. Durning is as smart as Robinson, but it wouldn't have taken a Barton Keyes like genius to blow this one up.

Big Trouble will not be a Billy Wilder like classic, but it's pretty funny and director Cassavetes and actor Falk work well together with the whole cast. Cassavetes and Falk had almost 35 years of experience together and they function like a well greased machine.

In addition to Billy Wilder both Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck were also still with us when Big Trouble hit the big screen. Wonder what they thought too?

Disappointing re-teaming of "The In-Laws"

[chez-3 · 6/10 · 18 February 1999]

"Big Trouble" is a mediocre film. You will laugh occasionally but that's about all. And that's crushing considering the two leads, Alan Arkin and Peter Falk, and the writer, Andrew Bergman, previously teamed or "The In-Laws" an all-time great film comedy.

Here the two leads play basically the same parts. Falk is the one in control with his devious ideas while Arkin is the meek, unsuspecting one thrown in over his head. This time around the needlessly complicated plot follows an insurance scam.

The film was directed by John Cassavettes, one of our great directors. But comedy is not a genre he handled well. There were numerous reports of problems during shooting. It shows on the screen.

The one bright spot is Beverly D'Angelo looking as sexy as ever. Maybe they should have relegated Falk and Arkin to backup and made her the lead.

Clearing up the Directorship Issue

[dknell · 15 June 2006]

I worked on this film in 1986, in a scene that was ultimately left on the cutting room floor. When I auditioned for the film, I met with the director, who was in fact, Andrew Bergman (credited solely as the writer). Several weeks went by before I actually worked, and by that time, Bergman had been replaced by John Cassevetes. What I was told at the time, was that Bergman had been fired, and that Falk, a friend of Cassevetes, recommended that Cassevetes come in to finish the job. I don't know how much of the film was already in the can at that point, but I know that Cassevetes changed the script a bit. In the scene I was involved in, Falk and Arkin go into a hardware store to buy dynamite to blow up a building (An insurance office, as I recall). I played the Hardware store clerk. I remember the script being pretty much thrown out the window, and improvising much of the dialog, which included Falk explaining that the dynamite was need for a luau. "My Wife," he said, "makes a suckling pig, that'll knock your eye out. First you baste it––" "With clarified butter," Arkin chimes in. "Then blast the sh*t of it with dynamite." As the clerk, I apologize that the store doesn't carry dynamite, and end up selling them a hundred pounds of charcoal briquettes instead.

Funny.

And you will likely never see this scene.

Ah well.

World's Longest Spit Take

[zsenorsock · 2/10 · 18 February 2005]

This is a pretty disappointing movie, coming on the heels of Alan Arkin and Peter Falk's terrific performance in "The In-Laws". That was a great movie. This is not. It seems like the entire production was under financed and thrown together. The production values are sloppy. In one scene you can actually see the lighting cables and c-stands as the stars chase through a hallway. I can only assume Arkin and Falk agreed to do this film out of friendship for John Cassavettes. This "Double Indemnity" parody is just not worthy of any of them though. However, there is one great, great moment in "Big Trouble" that stands out: the world's longest spit take. This is done early in the picture when it seems the movie might actually recreate the fun and excitement of "The In-Laws". Watch as Alan Arkin samples some of Falk's herring liquor. It's a show stopping, side splitting moment.

But after that, stop the tape. There's nothing else worth seeing.

Amusing but not as good as THE IN-LAWS

[theowinthrop · 7/10 · 13 May 2007]

After seeing a review of this film's best remembered sequence on Channel 5 news back in 1986 I went out to see it. It was fortunate, that I did because BIG TROUBLE did not have a long or successful movie box office run. And with some reason.

In 1979, when Falk and Arkin made THE IN-LAWS, that film was just a tidal wave of fun. It seemed that movies had serendipitously put together two actors who played off each other very well. But no mutual property turned up to put them (hopefully with Richard Libertini again) through their paces. Then came BIG TROUBLE.

It is funny at points, but it is also less amusing for some plot problems that did not occur in THE IN-LAWS. In the earlier film, Korpett (Arkin) was a successful, if timid (or staid), dentist living in suburbia. As such, his inter-involvement with his new in-law Ricardo (Falk) shakes the foundations of his entire world. A similar situation is in BIG TROUBLE, but it is more serious - for some reason - here. Leonard Hoffman (Arkin) is an insurance salesman for a firm owned by Winslow (Robert Stack) and serving under O'Mara (Charles Durning). He has a wife (Valerie Curtin) and three sons who are triplets, musical prodigies, and need to begin expensive education to enhance their musical career potentials. Arkin can't pay for all this. He makes a decent living, but not a really good one to support the triplets and their goals. He is constantly defeated by his bosses or by his timidity from getting the raises or promotions he deserves. He gets a call from a Mrs. Blanche Rickey (Beverly D'Angelo - the name, by the way, is a joke based on Baseball Team manager/owner BRANCH Rickey) to set an appointment to discuss life insurance with her and her husband Steve (Falk). Arkin goes and finds a suspicious set up but one that he has to accept.

Falk's Steve Rickey is all smiles and agreements. He is the direct opposite of the negative Mr. Dietrichson in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, who is the husband slated for murder for profit by his wife Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) and salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray). Falk is fully willing to sign a life insurance policy with Arkin's company that includes a double indemnity clause. This is unusual, but Arkin needs the commission because of his three sons. So he sells the unusually large policy. Within a week D'Angelo reports that Falk has died in an accident. Arkin rushes to see her at her lawyer's office, and meets the doctor (Libertini) as well as her bald headed, mustached lawyer. But a frightened Arkin realizes the lawyer is Rickey in disguise.

Soon, though plots twists, Arkin finds himself tied to trying to get the policy paid off, despite heavy suspicions by Durning and Stack about it. The resolution of the insurance matter, Arkin's future with his job, and the heavy tuition of the three sons is at the conclusion of the film.

Now, the issue in this film was that Arkin's character's financial and social situation was not firmly settled due to ensuing educational expenses that he could not afford. Hoffman is not as stable in his social role as Kornpett was. Instead the audience is sorry for Arkin's plight with his three sons and his no-where job, but because it is sorry the threat of Falk's plans is not as funny when they explode in Arkin's face.

The resolution of THE IN-LAWS (a last minute rescue) was pretty good, but there was something slap-dash about the way BIG TROUBLE ended. Here the plotting of Falk and D'Angelo gets so out of hand that Durning is tied up and imprisoned for the last half hour of the film. It is by a sheer fluke at the end that things right themselves out. But the rushing through or stitching together of parts wrecked the conclusion.

It is amusing at it's best moments (the Norwegian Sardine Liquor sequence was incredibly funny - and remains so: it was shown in that film review as a clip on Channel 5 by Stewart Klein the film critic). But few other moments were that funny. I would say it is worthy to look at, but THE IN-LAWS is far and away the better film.

Painful

[frankfob · 3/10 · 19 May 2002]

Knowing the kind of work of which actors Alan Arkin and Peter Falk and writer Andrew Bergman are capable, the blame for this jumbled, poorly made "comedy" can only be laid at the feet of director John Cassavetes, or whoever it was who was responsible for it. Supposedly Cassavetes didn't direct most of it but was brought in to replace a director who was fired. If that's so, it's understandable why he was fired. If it's not so, then it's Cassavetes who should have been fired. While all accounts I've read about Cassavetes mention that one of his most endearing traits was his wild sense of humor, there's certainly no evidence of that in this misfire. Falk tries valiantly to breathe some life into this lumbering mess, but Arkin seems to be waiting for someone to tell him what to do--or at least to give him something funny to say. If the producers had wanted to make a sequel to the hilarious Falk/Arkin "The In-Laws," then that's what they should have done. The picture is somewhat schizophrenic--it SEEMS to be a sequel to "The In-Laws," and was advertised as such, but Arkin's and Falk's characters and situations have been changed so drastically that it's really a completely different picture.

Anyway, the film is virtually a complete dud. The few gags that made it into the picture are ruined by bad timing and poor editing. In addition, much of the film makes no sense whatsoever (there were major production problems, with constant cast and crew changes, and it shows) and the movie did no good for anyone connected with it--especially the audience. While "The In-Laws" was a major hit, this thing came and went pretty much overnight. It was savaged by critics and ignored by audiences--justifiably on both counts. If you're not in the mood to see otherwise extremely talented people embarrass themselves, do yourself--and them--a favor and skip this.

Double Indemnity, Half the Laughs

[boblipton · 6/10 · 18 August 2010]

I don't quite understand how John Cassavetes wound up in charge of this burlesque of Wilder & Brackett's classic DOUBLE INDEMNITY. In some ways it feels like a Three Stooges movie directed like von Sternberg -- there's a scene in which Falk is made up to look like Larry Fine. I suppose Falk felt that Bergman wasn't as good a director as a comedy writer and got his pal Cassavetes to fill in, so there would be some money in the estate.

Actually, if you look at this movie carefully, you'll see a lot of classic movie references, scenes shot like THE BIG SLEEP and THE GODFATHER. However, they don't really add much to the fun except for movie geeks like myself.

In this movie, as in THE INLAWS, the real fun is watching Arkin fall apart in the midst of an insane situation, while Peter Falk remains jovially calm. There are no moments of great insanity, like the "Serpentine, Shel" sequence, or dealing with Richard Libertini -- who has a small role in this movie too. Still, unless you go in expecting the earlier movie, you should have a good time.

Cassavetes' career comes to a sad end.

[Reaper · 3/10 · 26 May 2017]

Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, who'd previously appeared in the In-Laws, team up for some reason in a film that's two-thirds a remake of Double Indemnity, and one-third a silly safe-cracking caper film. I don't know that I've ever seen Peter Falk embarrass himself this badly in any film. Falk has no buddy-film chemistry with Arkin, who seems to want to take the next taxi off this picture. After the Double Indemnity-style insurance caper goes off the rails, around the hour mark, Falk and Arkin decide to rob the company chairman, or his safe, or something. It doesn't fit together, none of the characters' motivations seem reasonable, and the film ends by fizzling out with a deus ex machina. It's a shame that Cassavetes couldn't have had a more distinguished swan song than this mishmash. I've wasted 93 minutes more egregiously, but not lately.

WRONG NUMBER

[nogodnomasters · 6/10 · 13 April 2019]

This film follows 1960's style comedies and humor. Unfortunately much of the humor and bits have been done before. Leonard (Alan Arkin) sells insurance. His three sons have all been accepted into Yale, something Leonard believes, as do many parents, they are somehow obligated to pay for their kid's college. (Where were these parents when I was growing up?) His boss won't float him a loan, so when an opportunity arises to pull off an insurance scam involving the soon to be dead Steve Rickey (Peter Falk) and his eye candy wife (Beverly D'Angelo) he agrees, but who is scamming who?

As you would expect the characters are more caricatures than real people. Like so many comedies, the film starts out as probable, then possible, then improbable, and finally inane. It has a few laughs. If you crave the old style movies and can stand the formula, this one will do.

Parental Guide: No f-bombs, sex, or nudity.

Double Indemnity

[SnoopyStyle · 4/10 · 12 December 2017]

Leonard Hoffman (Alan Arkin) is an insurance agent with a suburban family. His three sons all get accepted into Yale. His boss Winslow (Robert Stack) refuses to help him with any scholarships. His work mate is the hard-nosed O'Mara (Charles Durning). He goes on a sales call to the drunken rich trophy wife Blanche Rickey (Beverly D'Angelo). She complains about her gambler husband Steve Rickey (Peter Falk). Desperate for money to pay for his kids' college, he joins Blanche to murder her husband for the life insurance.

This is the last film of John Cassavetes and he apparently hated it. The plot is so close to Double Indemnity that this is basically a spoof. Of course, none of it is funny because every moment of the movie, I'm asking if this is deliberate. It's hard to tell since Double Indemnity is not watched all the time. In order for a spoof to work, the audience must know all the beats in the original and what the filmmaker is doing to satire each moment for a joke. Then the last third of the movie goes bonkers. It becomes non-sense. The actors are trying for some wacky physical comedy despite the noir story. It's frustrating to watch a movie where the jokes don't work. One can see that everybody is trying but I don't understand what the film is trying to do.

cast gets together again... pretty good caper!

[ksf-2 · 8/10 · 14 September 2015]

Total parody of "Double Indemnity", with some added twists. The awesome, hilarious team of A. Arkin and P. Falk are together again, seven years after the under-rated "In-Laws". Beverly D'Angelo is "Blanche", the Barbara Stanwyck wife, looking to knock off the husband. Arkin is "Leonard", the insurance salesman, trying to put his sons through Yale. Falk is "Steve", the husband. Robert Stack is Leonard's boss, who refuses to help with the college bills. If you're a big fan of Falk and/or Arkin, you'll LOVE this film; they spend the whole time trying to outdo each other in the over-acting department. Also keep an eye out for Richard Libertini, also from the In-Laws; others will know him as the guru in All of Me (Edwina, Back in Bowl ) and Charles Durning (Tootsie). Written (copied/parodied ?) by Andrew Bergman, who certainly knew comedy... he had written the original In-Laws, Blazing Saddles, Soapdish, and Fletch!

Directed by John Cassevetes, who had done a bunch of stuff with Peter Falk already. Seems like quite a departure for Cassevetes... he had always done serious, pretty rough dramas. Fun stuff. On DVD. Never see this one shown on TV for some reason.

Not as funny as 'The In Laws'

[greene515 · 5/10 · 24 October 2006]

'Big Trouble' is an unfortunate letdown, it reunites the dream casting of Alan Arkin and Peter Falk, who first paired off together in the classic comedy 'The In-Laws, Sadly this re teaming is not as funny as one would expect, Andrew Bergman, allegedly was inline to direct this, but Bergman, unfortunately dropped out, and was replaced by the father of independent cinema John Cassevetes,

Granted there are some amusing scenes with the pair,but somewhere out there on the cutting room floor, there's a lot more to answer for, Plot has Arkin doing his usual sch-tick as a hapless insurance salesman trying to get his sons in to prestigious Yale, he gets a lot more than he bargains for when he becomes embroiled in a bizarre insurance fraud scam,

unusual Cassavetes style comedy

[LesHalles · 11 July 2002]

This is a demanding comedy, because much of the humor depends on references to classic films, and will be lost to someone who is not familiar with them. It does have many incredibly funny scenes on its own right, and some great performance bits.

Plus Beverly D'Angelo is gorgeous and very funny both.

See some later reviews for relevent films, and consider seeing the referenced films first to appreciate the humor more. Without understanding the references and parodies of this film-maker's comedy though, it might be confusing.

Also consider seeing some of Cassavetes work first, to get an idea of what he is usually about. This film melds his own idosyncratic style with a more mainstream American comic style, but has the timing and structure of Godard film.

Big Trouble is a a reteaming of some of the acting same talent that made the incredibly funny The In-Laws. It is much more surrealistic and avant-garde, being directed by that greatest of American directors John Cassavetes. Like the films he himself scripted, it is more character than plot driven. Cassavetes is exploring something in this film; it is not a consistently drop-down funny flim like The In-Laws, nor is the action as suspenseful and spine-tingling, but it has some incredibly funny moments, including one of the funniest scenes ever put on film (try some sardine liquor). Not to be missed by Cassavetes fans or die-hard In-Laws fans who want more.

Someone looking for an easy to watch straight-ahead comedy or action/adventure film, however, might be disappointed.

A mess

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 18 February 2023]

Big Trouble is the last movie that John Cassavetes would direct and it reunites Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, who starred in writer Andrew Bergman's The In-Laws, but the wild thing is that without this movie, Back to the Future may not have come out from Universal.

That's because it was so similar to Double Indemnity that Columbia Pictures requested that Universal Pictures give them the license to reuse the plot. Universal executive Frank Price used to be at Columbia and remembered the time travel script, so if they made the deal for Big Trouble, he would make the deal for the movie he wanted.

Bergman has been in some other strange studio deals in his career, like Blazing Saddles. His screenplay Tex X was what Mel Brooks started with and he's listed as a co-writer. When Warner Bros. Decided they wanted to keep the movie rights to make sequels, they did a sitcom pilot called Black Bart starring Louis Gossett Jr. It only aired one contractually obligated time in 1975. Bergman is the only creative listed.

Los Angeles-based insurance man Leonard Hoffman (Arkin) has a ticking timebomb of triplets all graduating at the same time and all going to Yale instead of a cheaper state school, as demanded by his wife Arlene (Valerie Curtin, who is Jane's cousin). The solution might come from one of his clients, Steve Rickey (Falk), who has a week to live but according to his wife Blanche (Beverly D'Angelo), has let his insurance policy slip. If he were to die unexpectantly, the double indemnity clause would make her rich and could possibly pay for Leonard's problems.

As for Cassavetes, as you can expect, he had issues with the studio bosses and didn't have final cut. Bergman was originally directed and left a third through shooting. Falk asked Cassavetes to come on and he wasn't used to making a movie from a script he didn't write.

Bergman took some of the blame when he said, "That was a mess. I never fixed the ending and that was the problem. You've got to have it when you get it on the floor. You can't say, "Later, we'll get it straight." It's true in every medium. You've got to hit the ground running and we didn't. I never had the ending straight."

Bergman was able to get his name removed, which is why Warren Bogle is in the credits as the writer. There's no producer credit as Bergman's long-time producing partner Mike Lobell took his name off this.

That said, at least it has a good cast, including Robert Stack (and his wife Rosemarie, playing his wife), Richard Libertini, Paul Dooley and Charles Durning. It also turns out that the stories of how it was made and the movie that was made somewhere else because of it are more interesting than the film that it is, which doesn't feel like a script by Bergman or a movie by Cassavetes.

Hilarious comedy, Alan Arkin & Peter Falk please do it again!

[MikeEgan · 9/10 · 11 July 2001]

This film is terrific, funnier even than The Inn-Laws which starred Falk & Arkin as well. The 'sardine liqueur' scene nearly killed me, as Arkin does a spit-take second to none, with Falk's dead-pan drone for background. I wish these guys would work together more, they really knock the wind out of me! -Mike

Sequel

[rmax304823 · 12 January 2003]

Spoilers. This movie is weak mainly when measured against the standard set by "The In Laws," which sets the bar pretty high. The chief problem is that "The In Laws" follows a definite, if lunatic, narrative line. One things leads logically to the next, each more bizarre than the last, but each incident building on previous ones. "Big Trouble" doesn't have that cumulative quality in its gags. It's episodic and seems to owe too much to farces like "Airplane." Some of the gags are flat. And the writers have descended at times into a hyperactive but unfunny madness in which all the characters are shouting at once, as if that were in itself amusing.

With that out of the way, I still recommend the film. Falk and Arkin play essentially the same characters as in "The In Laws," and Richard Libertini does a reprise of his Latin-American character. There's a certain amusement quotient built into the film right there. And some of the gags are as good as anything in "The In Laws." I will give two examples. First -- the "sardine liquer" scene in which Falk's host more or less forces Arkin's guest to drink this concoction imported from Norway -- "Kipitinsk, as they call it." There are spit takes and then there are spit takes. The usual protocol would require Arkin to take a mouthful of this poison and then look around frantically for somewhere to spit it out. At the next rung upward on the ladder he might swallow it and say something in a hoarse whisper. Here he goes completely over the top and, with scarcely any expression on his face, helplessly spits the stuff out in streams, not once, but over and over again, all over his clothes and the table, like the puking fat man in Monty Python's "Meaning of Life." The second example I will mention only briefly because a complete description of the context would take too much space. A body in the morgue has been "reconstructed" by a "plastic surgeon" to resemble Falk. (Don't even ask.) The witnesses examine the body with interest. "I have a theory about this case," says Charles Durning as an insurance investigator. Arkin: "Oh, really? What theory is that?" "My theory," says Durning, "is that this b*****d is still alive." And he begins tickling the feet of the dead body which then comes to life and jumps from the table.

I can't see any evidence that this is in any way what is usually thought of as a "Cassavetes" film. I just don't see his hand in it. It's clearly not improvised, and it just isn't original enough, as most sequels aren't. And I assume that there are multiple references to other films in this one and that I missed most of them. It's basically a spoof of "Double Indemnity," and an extremely funny one at times. (Arkin trying to do an impression of Falk's distinctive voice while pretending to BE him on the train. "Oh, yeah.") The first hour, which sticks closest to "Double Indemnity", the funniest part. After that the story begins to run out of steam.

Judging from some of the comments, there wasn't much to expect from this film, but I was rather pleasantly surprised.

unusual Cassavetes style comedy

[LesHalles · 11 July 2002]

This is a demanding comedy, because much of the humor depends on references to classic films, and will be lost to someone who is not familiar with them. It does have many incredibly funny scenes on its own right, and some great performance bits.

Plus Beverly D'Angelo is gorgeous and very funny both.

See some later reviews for relevent films, and consider seeing the referenced films first to appreciate the humor more. Without understanding the references and parodies of this film-maker's comedy though, it might be confusing.

Also consider seeing some of Cassavetes work first, to get an idea of what he is usually about. This film melds his own idosyncratic style with a more mainstream American comic style, but has the timing and structure of Godard film.

Big Trouble is a reteaming of some of the acting same talent that made the incredibly funny The In-Laws. It is much more surrealistic and avant-garde, being directed by that greatest of American directors John Cassavetes. Like the films he himself scripted, it is more character than plot driven. Cassavetes is exploring something in this film; it is not a consistently drop-down funny flim like The In-Laws, nor is the action as suspenseful and spine-tingling, but it has some incredibly funny moments, including one of the funniest scenes ever put on film (try some sardine liquor). Not to be missed by Cassavetes fans or die-hard In-Laws fans who want more.

Someone looking for an easy to watch straight-ahead comedy or action/adventure film, however, might be disappointed.

Hilarious Comedy

[dhagenadha · 25 November 2006]

l rented this movie by accident, recommending my girlfriend rent the other film entitled "Big Trouble" (2002). Well, it turned out we were lucky as Alan Arkin and Peter Falk are some of my favorite actors. The chemistry between Arkin and Falk is magical. The plot parallels some old Hollywood movies such as "Double Indemnity" in an odd fashion. I would describe it as "quirky", a throwback to the 1980's and a "must see" for all fans of Arkin, Falk, and Beverly D'Angelo, who looks fabulous in a variety of sexy outfits and carries her part with typical aplomb. Some of the scenes had me laughing so hard I had to stop the tape to recover (see Sardine Liquor). Charles Durning plays his important supporting role to perfection as well. Look for the uncredited cameo by Samuel L. Jackson near the beginning. This is a winner!

Cassevettes Knockoff

[Onyx-10 · 11 August 2000]

This comedy according to Cineaste magazine was not directed by John Cassevettes but was lent his name after a young inexperienced director colleague of his fell into big...well, you know. This article went on to say that he was pretty grumpy on his deathbed knowing that this would be his last "credit". Well, that's a shame, because for a man who only made one comedy, a loopy one at that, this movie might have rounded out a legacy of angst, disillusionment and good old-fashioned middle-class American self-torture.

If that last labyrinthian sentence did nothing to sway you then consider this: the supporting actresses Beverly D'Angelo and Valerie Curtin are quite funny, too, enough to make this silly and completely unimportant take on one American's attempt to "send the boys to Yale" worth a watch. There is an unusual amount of improv in certain scenes that actually give the movie a satirical bite, hey folks,I heard on the radio yesterday that 60% of all Americans have $4500 of debt or more! Anyone who's lost sleep wondering "where will I get that kind of money?" will relate to Big Trouble.