Now consider the casting: Peter Falk and Alan Arkin in the earlier film, vs. Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks this time. Splendid choices, you would agree, and yet the chemistry is better in the earlier film. Falk goes into his deadpan lecturer mode, slowly and patiently explaining things that sound like utter nonsense. Arkin develops good reasons for suspecting he is in the hands of a madman.

Michael Douglas makes his character more reassuring and insouciant, as if he's inviting his new in-law along on a lark, and that's not as funny, because he seems to be trying to make it fun, instead of trying to conceal the truth of a deadly situation. Albert Brooks is portrayed as neurotic and fearful by nature, and so his reactions are not so much inspired by the pickle he's in as by the way way he always reacts to everything.

These are small adjustments in the natures of the two characters, but crucial to the success of the films. Comedy works better when the characters seem utterly unaware that they are being funny. And something else is missing, too: The unexpected craziness of the foreign leader, who in the 1979 film brought the movie almost to a halt (I wrote that I laughed so hard, I laughed at myself laughing). The new film plows much more familiar comic terrain.

Richard Libertini was the South American dictator in the earlier film, a sublime nut case who had an intimate relationship with a sock puppet he addresses as Senor Wences. His two North American visitors desperately try to play along with the gag, without being sure whether the guy really believes the sock puppet is alive, or is only testing them.

In the new version, the foreign madman is an international arms dealer named Thibodoux. He's played by David Suchet with sublime comic timing, and is very funny in a scene where he explains that he was once ruthless, but after studying under Deepak Chopra has become more gentle, and now allows his victims a running start before shooting at them. All very well, but where is the sock puppet? Why remake a movie and leave out its funniest element--a sequence so funny, it's all a lot of people can remember about the movie? My guess is that David Suchet could have risen to the occasion with a masterful sock puppet performance.

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