i must have seen a different film!!

good back-story, and good acting

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Leonard Hoffman (Alan Arkin) is an insurance agent with a suburban family. His three sons all get accepted into Yale. His boss Winslow (Robert Stack) refuses to help him with any scholarships. His work mate is the hard-nosed O'Mara (Charles Durning). He goes on a sales call to the drunken rich trophy wife Blanche Rickey (Beverly D'Angelo). She complains about her gambler husband Steve Rickey (Peter Falk). Desperate for money to pay for his kids' college, he joins Blanche to murder her husband for the life insurance.This is the last film of John Cassavetes and he apparently hated it. The plot is so close to Double Indemnity that this is basically a spoof. Of course, none of it is funny because every moment of the movie, I'm asking if this is deliberate. It's hard to tell since Double Indemnity is not watched all the time. In order for a spoof to work, the audience must know all the beats in the original and what the filmmaker is doing to satire each moment for a joke. Then the last third of the movie goes bonkers. It becomes non-sense. The actors are trying for some wacky physical comedy despite the noir story. It's frustrating to watch a movie where the jokes don't work. One can see that everybody is trying but I don't understand what the film is trying to do.

This is a pretty disappointing movie, coming on the heels of Alan Arkin and Peter Falk's terrific performance in "The In-Laws". That was a great movie. This is not. It seems like the entire production was under financed and thrown together. The production values are sloppy. In one scene you can actually see the lighting cables and c-stands as the stars chase through a hallway. I can only assume Arkin and Falk agreed to do this film out of friendship for John Cassavettes. This "Double Indemnity" parody is just not worthy of any of them though. However, there is one great, great moment in "Big Trouble" that stands out: the world's longest spit take. This is done early in the picture when it seems the movie might actually recreate the fun and excitement of "The In-Laws". Watch as Alan Arkin samples some of Falk's herring liquor. It's a show stopping, side splitting moment.But after that, stop the tape. There's nothing else worth seeing.

Spoilers. This movie is weak mainly when measured against the standard set by "The In Laws," which sets the bar pretty high. The chief problem is that "The In Laws" follows a definite, if lunatic, narrative line. One things leads logically to the next, each more bizarre than the last, but each incident building on previous ones. "Big Trouble" doesn't have that cumulative quality in its gags. It's episodic and seems to owe too much to farces like "Airplane." Some of the gags are flat. And the writers have descended at times into a hyperactive but unfunny madness in which all the characters are shouting at once, as if that were in itself amusing. With that out of the way, I still recommend the film. Falk and Arkin play essentially the same characters as in "The In Laws," and Richard Libertini does a reprise of his Latin-American character. There's a certain amusement quotient built into the film right there. And some of the gags are as good as anything in "The In Laws." I will give two examples. First -- the "sardine liquer" scene in which Falk's host more or less forces Arkin's guest to drink this concoction imported from Norway -- "Kipitinsk, as they call it." There are spit takes and then there are spit takes. The usual protocol would require Arkin to take a mouthful of this poison and then look around frantically for somewhere to spit it out. At the next rung upward on the ladder he might swallow it and say something in a hoarse whisper. Here he goes completely over the top and, with scarcely any expression on his face, helplessly spits the stuff out in streams, not once, but over and over again, all over his clothes and the table, like the puking fat man in Monty Python's "Meaning of Life." The second example I will mention only briefly because a complete description of the context would take too much space. A body in the morgue has been "reconstructed" by a "plastic surgeon" to resemble Falk. (Don't even ask.) The witnesses examine the body with interest. "I have a theory about this case," says Charles Durning as an insurance investigator. Arkin: "Oh, really? What theory is that?" "My theory," says Durning, "is that this b*****d is still alive." And he begins tickling the feet of the dead body which then comes to life and jumps from the table.I can't see any evidence that this is in any way what is usually thought of as a "Cassavetes" film. I just don't see his hand in it. It's clearly not improvised, and it just isn't original enough, as most sequels aren't. And I assume that there are multiple references to other films in this one and that I missed most of them. It's basically a spoof of "Double Indemnity," and an extremely funny one at times. (Arkin trying to do an impression of Falk's distinctive voice while pretending to BE him on the train. "Oh, yeah.") The first hour, which sticks closest to "Double Indemnity", the funniest part. After that the story begins to run out of steam.Judging from some of the comments, there wasn't much to expect from this film, but I was rather pleasantly surprised.

"Big Trouble" is a mediocre film. You will laugh occasionally but that's about all. And that's crushing considering the two leads, Alan Arkin and Peter Falk, and the writer, Andrew Bergman, previously teamed or "The In-Laws" an all-time great film comedy.Here the two leads play basically the same parts. Falk is the one in control with his devious ideas while Arkin is the meek, unsuspecting one thrown in over his head. This time around the needlessly complicated plot follows an insurance scam.The film was directed by John Cassavettes, one of our great directors. But comedy is not a genre he handled well. There were numerous reports of problems during shooting. It shows on the screen.The one bright spot is Beverly D'Angelo looking as sexy as ever. Maybe they should have relegated Falk and Arkin to backup and made her the lead.