farm hijinx

Pauly Shore gets brought home to meet the parents and that they never wring his neck sorta makes “Son In Law” a character study of patience. What’s surprising is that there is a little more to this fish out of water story than Shore’s usual obnoxiousness. He plays the R.A. of some California college, which is where mid-western valedictorian Becca (Carla Gugino) experiences a culture shock before Shore’s Crawl takes her under his wing. When he has nowhere to go for Thanksgiving, its Crawl’s turn to feel like a greenhorn on “Green Acres”, but it’s the family who feels like they’ve been hit by a ton of bricks when Becca, trying to avoid another engagement to an old boyfriend, lies and calls Crawl her fiance. There’s a handful of amusing things here- like Crawl combining his Southern California, surfer dude sensibility with the more midwestern look (at one point also appearing in ass-less chaps) and more where he has to prove himself a decent farmer by feeding the pigs, driving the tractors, and killing the Thanksgiving turkey. The joke is that Crawl is a weenie and actors like Lane Smith, playing the family patriarch (whose joke calling Crawl "Crotch" is an example of this movie's thin form of wit), “The Sandlot’s Patrick Renna, playing his young son, and Mason Adams, playing grandpa, all look on with a mix of bemusement and consternation. To Shore’s credit, he gives this character a well-meaning good-heart; a peaceful little beatnik whose compliments and “help” usually come with a crudity attached to them he just doesn’t realize. The problem still is that his surfer-speak-break-every-word-down-into-syllables shtick still isn’t very funny, in fact it’s cringey, and we never really buy Becca getting so close to this guy to begin with, never mind the family. Gugino is unfortunately underused, which makes it all the more surprising when this movie suddenly turns into a romance in the last third. There’s some arbitrary conflict with Tiffani Amber Thiessen showing up but, again, who cares? At least some of the culture shocks offer some pleasant hi-jinx. The movie should have stuck more to those.