My Wife's Relations
 |
"Papa! Shut your eyes and see what I married!"
—Kate, introducing her husband
|
 |
A series of misunderstandings involving a taffy pull, a postman, a broken window, and a monolingual Polish judge leaves Buster Keaton married to Kate, a large, irate Irishwoman whose family thinks he's rich.
My Wife's Relations can be seen in its entirety at Google Video, or downloaded from the Internet Archive.
Tropes used in My Wife's Relations include:
- Accidental Marriage
- Amusing Injuries
- Art Imitates Art: Buster's father-in-law reinforces his proletariat cred by looking at a small-scale reproduction of the Venus de Milo and asking, "Who broke the arms off that monument?"
- Boisterous Bruiser: All of Kate's brothers.
- Chase Scene
- Crash Into Hello: Subverted, in that it does not result in love, though it does lead to marriage.
- Disaster Dominoes
- Double Take
- Dragged by the Collar
- Dynamic Entry
- Finagle's Law
- Forgotten Trope: Buster boards a train for Reno, signaling his intention to get a divorce.
- Fun with Foreign Languages: Buster and Kate think they're in court because of a broken window. The judge thinks he's conducting a wedding.
- Improvised Weapon
- Literal Ass-Kicking
- Lottery Ticket: Actually, a letter announcing an inheritance.
- Meal Ticket: What Kate and her family think she's married.
- Mistaken Identity: Buster's wife and in-laws believe that he has inherited $100,000 on the basis of a misdirected letter.
- Murphy's Bed: Various, including a Bear Trap Bed.
- Nouveau Riche
- Oireland: Ancestral land of the wife's family.
- Pepper Sneeze
- Punched Across the Room: The photographer is shoved across one room, then sent across a second and out the door with a kick in the ass.
- The Roaring Twenties: Kate's family makes home brew, though it's unclear if they do so because of Prohibition or because they're Oirish.
- Slapstick
- Sweet Tooth
- Take That: Possibly directed at Keaton's real-life in-laws, the Talmadges.
- Tap on the Head
- Team Shot: Subverted. The family poses for a group portrait, but Buster keeps getting pushed out of frame.
- Wake Up Fighting
- Working Class People Are Morons