Son in Law (1993)

Thanksgiving movies from the ’80s and ’90s are weirdly hard to find, so for week two of Feast Mode, Steve went with one that’s actually about going home for the holiday: Son in Law (1993), where Pauly Shore tags along with a South Dakota farm girl on her Thanksgiving break and somehow wins over her whole family. It’s Steve’s pick, and he watched it about a dozen times in high school. He was 13, it was PG-13, and that was the perfect spot: edgy enough to feel cool, tame enough that his parents didn’t care. A certain Tiffani Amber Thiessen dance scene sealed the deal. Nic had a long-running anti-Pauly Shore thing going until his wife Jeanie made this one of the first movies they watched together. Now his 14-year-old daughter loves it so much she writes down Crawl’s lines so she can quote them back.

Then comes some peak 2 Dads research. Nic sees Crawl hanging from a fire sprinkler pipe, doesn’t buy it, and actually contacts a fire sprinkler company to check. (Totally fine if you’re under 250 pounds. Thanks, Peter.) He also spots a feed bag in the background labeled Hog Grower and would really like a bomber jacket, please. Steve admits, against his better judgment, that the mud wrestling ring looks exactly like the diet chili he choked down around 2008. He also names a Tooth Fairy threat aimed at a little kid the darkest moment in a movie where two people get drugged. And Nic tells the story of showing up to his parents’ Thanksgiving in a $15 pilgrim costume and getting maybe the hardest laugh of his dad’s life.

There are plenty of nitpicks too. Steve notices that a raw turkey on the counter turns into a fully cooked feast about twenty minutes later, which Nic compares to a Ronco rotisserie infomercial. There are assless chaps that, from the front, clearly aren’t. And Nic puts the writing staff’s combined age at 408. Through all of it, both dads stay proud Lane Smith stans.

As Walter would say, let’s munch on some grindage.