Meet the Parents
***
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by UIP on December 15, 2000; certificate 12; 107 minutes;
country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Jay Roach; produced by Robert
De Niro, Jay Roach, Jane Rosenthal, Nancy Tenenbaum.
Written by John Hamburg, Jim Herzfeld; based on a 1992 film
written by Mary Ruth Clarke, Greg Glienna. Photographed by
Peter James; edited by Jon Poll.
CAST.....
Ben Stiller..... Greg Focker
Robert De Niro..... Jack Byrnes
Teri Polo..... Pam Byrnes
Blythe Danner..... Dina Byrnes
Nicole BeHuff..... Debbie Byrnes
Jon Abrahams..... Denny Byrnes
Thomas McCarthy..... Bob Banks
Owen Wilson..... Kevin Rawley
Why do we get nervous about meeting parents --
of friends, partners, roommates? Why do we picture worst-case scenarios,
afraid of looking impolite, of embarrassment, as if we're going to some kind
of audition? People are people. They're not waiting to pounce on us. Things
usually turn out okay.
"Meet the Parents" is a parade of
social nightmares, a brilliant comedy in which we laugh that we do not cry
-- although we do wince, as every expectation the main character has of things
turning out okay crumbles and his face gets ever the redder. His name is
Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), a nurse from New York City, who goes along with
his fiancé (Pam Byrnes) to visit her family out in the country, and
spends a whole weekend waiting for the ice to break. Every one of his quips
is met with deadly silence. Every idle, meaningless conversation-starter
he utters suffers brutal scrutiny. He perpetrates an unforgivable faux-pas
with every second move he makes -- like when glancing at the floor, and seeming
like he's looking at his prospective mother-in-law's crotch… or making
a wisecrack about a vase which turns out to be the fiancé's grandmother's
urn.
This is an eccentric comedy where things get
progressively ludicrous and unbearable for Greg. The father, played by Robert
De Niro, turns out to be an ex-CIA agent, and gives him a lie detector test.
Mishaps lead to the garden going up in an electrical fire, a volleyball breaking
someone's nose, the cat going missing… you get the idea.
Stiller, used to playing awkward, un-hip guys
in films like "Reality Bites" and "There's Something About Mary", is a perfect
choice to play Greg -- when he looks embarrassed, we're convinced, and we
gasp in shocked laughter at everything that happens to him. De Niro does
good work as his nemesis -- quietly menacing and intimidating, hilariously
absurd in his desire to despise our young hero.
"Meet the Parents" is merciless up until its last
act, when it gets a bit conventional, and allows sentimentality to creep
into the material. It works best when Greg is a hapless victim of situations
and people that seem inexplicably, absolutely against him -- in those moments
it is a devilish masterpiece.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
2000 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2000 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)