Fortunately bearing resemblance in name only to Meet the Deedles, Meet the Applegates, and, lest we forget, Meet the Feebles, Meet the Parents symbolizes a promotion of sorts for its director, Jay Roach, who leaves Mike Myers wrangling behind (Roach helmed both Austin Powers films) for the funnier (say I) and somewhat more sophisticated pastures of anxiety farce.
Schlumpfy Greg Focker (Stiller, his character's name the only real dead horse beaten here) wants to propose to Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo, a pretty cold fish, I'm sorry to say), but he learns from eavesdropping that asking her father's permission first is the best policy. With Pam's sister due to be married, Greg eagerly accepts his girlfriend's invitation to spend a pre-wedding fall retreat at her folks' Rockwellian New York spread. Desperate to forge a good impression, Greg follows Pam's advice by going cold turkey on cigarettes around Ma and Pa Byrnes and concealing his actual given name from them (I don't have the heart to spoil it). Sadly, the harder he tries, the bigger he fails to win the trust, or even acceptance, of her dad, ex-CIA man Jack (Robert DeNiro).
The stage is initially set for their tug of war when Greg reveals that he's more of a 'dog person' to cat-loving Jack. "You prefer an emotionally shallow animal," Jack retorts. Other early faux-pas' see Greg accidentally shattering the urn that stores the ashes of Jack's mother and confessing that he's a male nurse instead of a doctor by choice, an unfathomable career move in Jack's ultra-conservative worldview. So much so that he doesn't believe Greg, and subjects him to a late-night polygraph test.
Lately, DeNiro has leaned towards comic material, and his Jack easily outclasses and outjokes the roles he played in either Analyze This or Rocky & Bullwinkle. As written by James Herzfeld (ironically a co-scriptor on Meet the Deedles) and John Hamburg, the character astutely banks on DeNiro's naturally intimidating demeanour while inhibiting the actor's tendency to ham it up. It's as complex and subtly wrought a performance as anything the actor's shown us since Martin Scorsese's 1982 masterpiece The King of Comedy. Stiller, portraying yet another consonant repackaging of Woody Allen's familiar nebbish, comes a notch closer to America's favourite underdog with Meet the Parents, and he'll convert non-fans forever with the climactic tongue-lashing Greg delivers a flight attendant. Quite simply, this Focker has us laughing out loud frequently and abundantly.
When we're not shielding our eyes in sympathetic embarrassment, that is--aye, there's the rub: mild blushing from audience members ripens into full-blown squirming past the halfway point of Meet the Parents. The escalating damage caused by Greg's lonesome is enough for an entire season's worth of Urkel mishaps (and often as agonizing as that sounds), and a bit too much, perhaps, of Greg's enfeeblement relies on Idiot Plot machinations (roughly defined by Ebert as problems that could be painlessly resolved if the characters approached one another as they would in life).
Besides extracting fine work from a top-flight cast, including Owen Wilson as a Christian everyman, the son-in-law of Jack's dreams (for a too short but hilarious time, the film confronts Focker's Jewishness with acerbic glee), Roach succeeds at capturing the appealingly chilly atmosphere of autumn--despite Peter James' undistinguished cinematography, we feel a participant in this folksy homecoming. An occasionally reluctant guest at that, of course: the fun in watching Greg self-immolate eventually peaks.
Male nurse Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is poised to propose to his girlfriend Pam (Teri Polo) during a weekend stay at her parents home. But here s the ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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