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.

Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, who'd previously appeared in the In-Laws, team up for some reason in a film that's two-thirds a remake of Double Indemnity, and one-third a silly safe-cracking caper film. I don't know that I've ever seen Peter Falk embarrass himself this badly in any film. Falk has no buddy-film chemistry with Arkin, who seems to want to take the next taxi off this picture. After the Double Indemnity-style insurance caper goes off the rails, around the hour mark, Falk and Arkin decide to rob the company chairman, or his safe, or something. It doesn't fit together, none of the characters' motivations seem reasonable, and the film ends by fizzling out with a deus ex machina. It's a shame that Cassavetes couldn't have had a more distinguished swan song than this mishmash. I've wasted 93 minutes more egregiously, but not lately.

'Big Trouble' is an unfortunate letdown, it reunites the dream casting of Alan Arkin and Peter Falk, who first paired off together in the classic comedy 'The In-Laws, Sadly this re teaming is not as funny as one would expect, Andrew Bergman, allegedly was inline to direct this, but Bergman, unfortunately dropped out, and was replaced by the father of independent cinema John Cassevetes,Granted there are some amusing scenes with the pair,but somewhere out there on the cutting room floor, there's a lot more to answer for, Plot has Arkin doing his usual sch-tick as a hapless insurance salesman trying to get his sons in to prestigious Yale, he gets a lot more than he bargains for when he becomes embroiled in a bizarre insurance fraud scam,

Knowing the kind of work of which actors Alan Arkin and Peter Falk and writer Andrew Bergman are capable, the blame for this jumbled, poorly made "comedy" can only be laid at the feet of director John Cassavetes, or whoever it was who was responsible for it. Supposedly Cassavetes didn't direct most of it but was brought in to replace a director who was fired. If that's so, it's understandable why he was fired. If it's not so, then it's Cassavetes who should have been fired. While all accounts I've read about Cassavetes mention that one of his most endearing traits was his wild sense of humor, there's certainly no evidence of that in this misfire. Falk tries valiantly to breathe some life into this lumbering mess, but Arkin seems to be waiting for someone to tell him what to do--or at least to give him something funny to say. If the producers had wanted to make a sequel to the hilarious Falk/Arkin "The In-Laws," then that's what they should have done. The picture is somewhat schizophrenic--it SEEMS to be a sequel to "The In-Laws," and was advertised as such, but Arkin's and Falk's characters and situations have been changed so drastically that it's really a completely different picture.Anyway, the film is virtually a complete dud. The few gags that made it into the picture are ruined by bad timing and poor editing. In addition, much of the film makes no sense whatsoever (there were major production problems, with constant cast and crew changes, and it shows) and the movie did no good for anyone connected with it--especially the audience. While "The In-Laws" was a major hit, this thing came and went pretty much overnight. It was savaged by critics and ignored by audiences--justifiably on both counts. If you're not in the mood to see otherwise extremely talented people embarrass themselves, do yourself--and them--a favor and skip this.