SON- IN-LAW. Directed by Steve Rash; written by Fax Bahr, Adam Small and Shawn Schepps; produced by Michael Rotenberg and Peter M. Lenkov for Hollywood Pictures. Starring Pauly Shore and Carla Gugino. Rated PG-13.
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This movie gives new meaning to the PG-13 rating. That's the proper designation for it, since it's full of off-color references (some further off than others), but nothing more offensive than that.
Besides that, the rating points you toward the exact age-group who will enjoy the picture. Much younger kids wouldn't get many of the jokes (although Shore is funny-looking enough to amuse most kids solely on that basis). And much older folks will find it unbearably silly and predictable.
Why the relatively high 3-star rating, then? Well, its heart is in the right place, for one thing. And it's difficult to come down too hard on a movie that, like its star, is so cheerful and enthusiastic about life, no matter what little obstacles may be tossed his way.
Rebecca (Gugino) is a South Dakota farm girl who leaves home and boyfriend to attend colelge in that far-away country, California. Dorm life is a little wild for her, but after a friendly resident advisor named Crawl (Shore) takes her by the hand to get new clothes, a new 'do, and even tattooed, she likes things a lot better.
Cut to Thanksgiving, when Rebecca makes her first trip home. Naturally, Crawl accompanies her. Not for any reasons that make real sense, but because we just have to see what happens when his ultra-L.A. sensibilities clash with the Norman Rockwell setting inhabited by Rebecca's family.
And, old and worn as this story is, Shore manages to get some new laughs out of it, as he tries to learn the finer points of pig- slopping, cow-milking and so on. Gugino isn't a very satisfactory partner in these goings-on, and Son-in-Law suffers when it tries any serious interaction between her and Crawl.
But when Shore just gets to let loose and share his considerably fractured take on the world, it's watchable, and even occasionally entertaining. And more than that, of course, for the 13-year- olds.
July 14, 1993