Alicia I love this movie so much

Linkshoch Wonderful Movie

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

calvinnme 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".

theowinthrop 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.

David Knell (dknell) 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.

MikeEgan 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