Son in Law [VHS]
Even with Pauly Shore as the "star," this 1993 comedy is a bit better than you might think. Shore plays an insouciant college student asked by a friend (Carla Gugino) to pretend to be her fiancé over Thanksgiving break, thus discouraging a jerk back in her hometown from proposing. Shore's character agrees but is given a hard time by the girl's salt-of-the-earth family of farmers. The hero and Gugino's character actually have a crush on each other, and now that they have an opportunity to explore romance, their relationship is threatened by poor Pauly's tests of rural manhood. Shore aside, the strong cast--including Gugino and Lane Smith--lend this thing some credibility; and the script doesn't take any shortcuts in moving the characters beyond their assumptions about one another.--Tom Keogh