DIRECTOR
Jay Roach
SCREENWRITERS
Jim Herzfeld
John Hamburg
STORY
BY
Greg Glienna
Mary Ruth Clarke
PRODUCERS
Robert De Niro
Jay Roach
Jane Rosenthal
Nancy Tenenbaum
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Peter James
MUSIC
Randy Newman
EDITOR
Jon Poll
CAST
Robert De Niro (Jack Byrnes)
Ben Stiller (Greg Focker)
Teri Polo (Pam Byrnes)
Blythe Danner (Dina Byrnes)
Nicole DeHuff (Deborah Byrnes)
Jon Abrahams (Denny Byrnes)
James Rebhorn (Dr. Larry Banks)
Owen Wilson (Kevin Rawley)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 108m
U.S. release: October 6, 2000
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official website
Other Jay
Roach films
reviewed on this site:
- Austin
Powers: International Man of Mystery
- Austin
Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
- Austin
Powers in Goldmember
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Swimming
into the deep end of his fifties now, Robert De Niro has become,
for want of a better term, the ultimate actor. You want the ultimate
monster, like Satan, Frankenstein, or Al Capone? See if you can
get De Niro. You need the ultimate gangster, either scary (GoodFellas)
or funny (Analyze
This)? Try to get De Niro. The actor's recent hunger
to lighten up after decades of heavy-duty roles has been a boon
for comedy directors, who now can actually get De Niro.
It makes perfect sense, then, that in the new comedy Meet
the Parents, De Niro should embody the ultimate funny/scary
father-in-law.
Meet the Parents, directed speedily enough by Jay Roach
(the Austin
Powers films), owes about 55 percent of its charm to
De Niro, who can be hilarious just sitting there -- glaring at
some poor sap over his spectacles, his mouth drawn down into
that unique De Niro scowl that suggests he's just drunk sour
milk and blames you for it. The other 45 percent belongs
to Ben Stiller, as the poor sap in question -- the unfortunately
named Greg Focker, madly in love with schoolteacher Pam (Teri
Polo) and eager to pop the question. Problem is, Greg hasn't
yet met Pam's parents -- her gentle mom Dina (Blythe Danner)
and much less gentle dad Jack (De Niro).
Jack, an anal-retentive family man ("I'll meet you out front
in 12 to 15 minutes") who's more than meets the eye, sizes
up poor Greg in a heartbeat when the young couple arrive at the
parents' well-groomed New York home for a weekend. Greg, who's
a male nurse and plans to stay one despite the universal shit
he takes for it, has everything going against him, particularly
his insecurity. No matter how hard he tries to impress Jack,
it either isn't enough or it's the polar opposite of what Jack
looks for in a son-in-law.
In the fine Murphy's Law tradition of comic inevitability (whatever
can go wrong will, and Greg will make things go wrong spectacularly),
Greg manages to track mud all over what little credibility he
has. Stepping lightly over the jokes: Greg's suitcase gets lost,
and an Austin Powers-style raunchy gag comes of that;
Greg takes a lie-detector test and fails with flying colors;
and anytime something is established as precious to the hard-boiled
but sentimental Jack, whether his mother's ashes or his beloved
cat Jinx, rest assured Greg will find a way to befoul it. One
would think that after the first couple of disasters, Greg would
be frightened into immobility, but that wouldn't be much of a
comedy.
Meet the Parents may well play as a horror movie for guys
who, like Greg, haven't yet encountered their potential father-in-law.
As in There's
Something About Mary, Ben Stiller is an Everyschmuck
-- a regular guy who gets deeper into chaos the harder he tries
to just get along. Stiller brings his edgy, repressed
hostility (which gets unrepressed in two beautifully rhythmed
rants near the end) to the game, parrying nervously but smoothly
with the rock-like De Niro, whose every syllable directed at
Greg drips with poorly-hidden contempt. The fun is when the two
antagonists try to maintain cordial masks, so the actors get
to footnote every pleasant exchange with psychological sword-clanging
worthy of Kurosawa.
The movie is very broad and sitcom-esque. For the kids, there's
a sewage-as-lawn-sprinkler gag, as well as a Rube Goldberg mishap
that begins on a roof and ends with a lovingly carved altar destroyed.
(The altar comes courtesy of Pam's ex-fiancee, a millionaire
stock whiz and carpentry hobbyist played by Shanghai
Noon's Owen Wilson with such easy good cheer that I was
disappointed not to see more of him.) The film is predictable
down to its bones, but Jay Roach has talked about that comic-inevitability
thing in interviews -- the mishap you see coming a mile away,
and settle back happily waiting for it to go down. Meet the
Parents gives you exactly what you expect from a comedy with
Ben Stiller as a petrified suitor and Robert De Niro as his petrifying
nemesis; that's nothing to sneeze at -- or to spray sewage at. |