Comedy into mystery

Here's a quiz: what is the point of remaking a comedy 20 years after the original and ironing out all the wrinkles that made the first one funny to begin with? Director Andrew Fleming may have the answer but it remains a mystery for now.

From a script allegedly inspired by the 1979 movie of the same title, Fleming has fashioned a pedestrian, resolutely unfunny, conventional farce. It takes as its comic text the contrast between Michael Douglas's daredevil, globetrotting secret agent, Steve, and Albert Brooks's pathologically cautious foot doctor, Jerry.

The men have not met, despite the fact that their respective son and daughter are to marry in a matter of days. Cue Steve's last-minute arrival at Jerry's house in a prenuptial gettogether which descends into a flurry of assassins, car chases and encounters with beautiful women and diabolical arms dealers.

Before he can say "athlete's foot" Jerry is whisked away into a maelstrom of activity involving all the things he fears most - including flying, homosexuality and heights.

In the absence of the two men, preparations escalate for a big wedding, against the wishes of the bride and groom who just want a quiet affair on a beach.

It comes as no surprise that the increasingly hatchet-faced Douglas is not a natural comedian, but that the usually reliable Brooks should mislay his comic timing is worrying.

Whatever chemistry the producers had hoped to generate - and I assume they were looking for something similar to Peter Falk/Alan

Arkin in the original or Robert De Niro/Charles Grodin in Midnight Run - their hopes were in vain.

Only David Suchet as a Deepak Chopra-reading, gay arms dealer has any real measure of humour, and even he has to struggle with a lamentable script and Fleming's uninspired direction. The one really good sight gag is at the expense of Barbra Streisand, whose private jet is "borrowed" by Steve.

As Jerry struggles to make a panic phone call back home from the plane's cloakroom he notices a sign by the telephone that reads: "No long distance please."

The In-Laws
Cert: cert12A