Twists and turns of Hollywood dating

The word was serpentine.

That’s what I recall Peter Falk yelling all through “The In-Laws,” the 1979 film that starred him as an undercover CIA agent who takes the unassuming dentist played by Alan Arkin through a maze of adventures involving an international counterfeiting plot but revolving around the impending wedding between his son and Arkin’s daughter.

The word, strangely enough, is missing from the remake, which showed as a sneak preview tonight at the River Park Square Cinemas.

That’s probably fortunate. Director Andrew Fleming (“Dick”) updates the film in so many other ways that the most memorable tagline from the original (directed by Arthur Hiller) would likely seem tired. Of course, Fleming didn’t manage to make his film flawless.

Michael Douglas as the Falk character and Albert Brooks as Arkin’s befuddled dentist are both good, especially Douglas who clearly doesn’t make near enough comedies. But what was Robin Tunney doing in this film (and what happens to her character)? Why does the script employ so many lame gay jokes? Whose idea was it to cast Ryan Reynolds (“Van Wilder”) as the groom, considering he looks as much like Douglas and Candice Bergen (who plays his mother) as Bergen does like her father’s dummy Charlie McCarthy ?

And then there was the line “man and wife,” which is how the wedding ceremony is finalized.

Man and wife? Haven’t we progressed far enough in equality between the sexes to realize that the phrase should be “husband and wife”?

Maybe they should have said serpentine after all.