Awfully Good: Son In Law

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Who better to spend Thanksgiving with than Pauly Shore?

Son In Law (1993)

Director: Steve Rash
Stars: Pauly Shore, Carla Gugino, Lane Smith

Is there a plot?

The Weasel visits a farm. E-I-E-I-NO.

What's the damage?

SON IN LAW is one or two laughs away from being a full-on horror movie. You’re beautiful, well-mannered, valedictorian daughter goes off to college and returns home for Thanksgiving with tattoos, platinum blonde hair and Pauly Shore as her fiancée. That’s scarier to me than any chainsaw-wielding psycho. At least getting murdered would be quick.

Won’t someone please give this man a career again?

BIO-DOME notwithstanding, SON IN LAW is probably The Weasel’s best starring vehicle. That’s not saying a whole lot, but there’s plenty of stuff to actually enjoy (or at least effortlessly tolerate) here. Aside from Shore, the movie boasts:

Carla Gugino. And what’s hotter than Carla Gugino? A young, hot Carla Gugino! (Although she definitely works better as a brunette.)
RED DAWN mayor and one time Perry White, Lane Smith, as Gugino’s no-nonsense farmer father who don’t care much for them city folk
Patrick Renna, the chubby redhead kid from THE SANDLOT and THE BIG GREEN, as Gugino’s perverted, panty stealing little brother. (BONUS: Click here for a recent pic of Renna and Yeah Yeah from THE SANDLOT!)

Okay, maybe not.

Dan Gauthier, who’s made an entire career playing the douchebag high school boyfriend in everything from “Friends” to TEEN WITCH to “Married with Children,” as Gugino’s douchebag high school boyfriend
Kelly Kapowski a.k.a. Tiffani Amber Thiessen as the town whore Tracy. I say that because I know if I asked any of my female friends to be the stripper at some stranger’s bachelor party, I would probably get slapped. (Or maybe I just need better friends.)
Cameos by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adam “The Hebrew Hammer” Goldberg and ENCINO MAN himself, Brendan Fraser, who reprises his role as Link very briefly, but still manages to eat a live frog.

It was a graduation speech they would never forget.

As for the plot of SON IN LAW, it’s pretty much just some studio exec saying, “Hey, let’s put that mentally challenged guy from MTV on a farm!” What follows is 90 minutes of the most generic fish-out-of-water story imaginable. Shore plays a guy named Crotch…er, Crawl, who is pretty much just Pauly Shore if Pauly Shore ever tried to go to college. He’s wacky (talks weird!), crazy (cross dresses!) and out of control (no respect for authority!). So of course the puritanical Becca immediately finds his lifestyle attractive. Within a few minutes the small town girl is helping Crawl mud wrestle obese women, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the movie.

Oh good, so I’m not the only person who wears that shirt around Carla Gugino.

Soon Becca is bringing the young gentleman home for Thanksgiving break, since Crawl clearly was a dumpster baby and has no real parents. And who would’ve guessed it, but The Weasal does not mix well with small town farm life. Crawl dresses in a manner that is displeasing to the conservative townsfolk. He also doesn’t know how to act around poultry, is terrible at driving complicated farm machinery, and can’t milk a cow without getting peed on. Oh boy, what hijinks! And all that tension is amped up when Becca’s former high school sweetheart, Rapey McDoucherton, publicly proposes to her and she freaks out and tells everyone that her and Crawl are engaged. Humiliated, McDoucherton vows revenge on the city boy. His devious plan involves throwing Crawl a bachelor party and getting him laid by Kelly Kapowski. Boy, I wish more people hated me like that.

The return of Johnny Dakota only meant more heartache for Kelly Kapowski.

But this is a movie, and not real life where Pauly Shore would get arrested, so The Weasel slowly wins everyone over with his non-traditional ways. Soon he’s using rollerblades to farm, giving the mom a sexy makeover, trying to make out with Becca’s grandfather and calling a square dance without the proper training. And then even though they’re only supposed to pretend to be in love, Becca and Crawl find themselves falling for each other for real! …Except, not really. There’s no real romantic scenes between them that suggests this, and Crawl seems to be falling more in love with her family than her. But I guess it’s all the same.

The Great Hambino’s costume was sensible, as well as aesthetically pleasing.

By the end, in what could easily pass for an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” everyone related to Becca has magically picked up the Weasel vernacular and now talks like Pauly Shore. It’s pretty creepy. If my dad ever started Thanksgiving dinner by proclaiming, “Let’s munch on some grindage!” I would probably kill myself with a gravy ladle.