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I'll
never forget one of the happiest days of my life. It was the day I
started dating my first true love. I'll never forget one of the happiest
days of her father's life. It was the day we broke up. In between,
I spent more time trying to impress him when I should have been trying
to impress her, but I think I would have had better luck finding Jimmy
Hoffa's body. In the incredibly funny, surprisingly introspective,
and downright inspired Meet the Parents, Ben Stiller goes through
the same process, and the result is one of the best movies of the
year.
Just when
Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), a kind-hearted Jewish nurse from Chicago,
is about to pop the big question to his girlfriend Pam (Teri Polo),
he's interrupted by the news that her sister is getting married
in two weeks. They fly to New York for the quickie affair, where
Greg faces the daunting task of meeting Pam's WASPy parents (Robert
De Niro and Blythe Danner) for the first time. It's quite obvious
that Greg does not have Pam's father, Jack, at "hello," and it's
all downhill from there. It doesn't help that Greg doesn't like
cats or that Jack is a retired CIA agent, and Jack makes the most
of every opportunity to prove that Greg is not good enough for his
daughter. Unfortunately, by trying too hard to prove him wrong,
Greg makes a mess of things (literally) and winds up proving him
right.
After making
his name with both Austin Powers movies, director Jay Roach
grows up (a little) with Meet the Parents. The juvenile humor
and gross-out jokes that defined those films have been replaced
by effective character development, adult storytelling, and some
downright hysterical scenes. OK, so there are a few gross-out jokes,
but what do you expect from a Hollywood movie in the year 2000 A.F.
(after Farrelly)? While the film is a high-concept comedy, Roach
is still able to nail down the incredibly awkward feeling and intense
dread that goes along with meeting your girlfriend's parents for
the first time.
As far as
casting is concerned, you couldn't have asked for a better dad-from-hell
than Robert De Niro. You can't help but be intimidated by him, thanks
to a number of intense roles in films like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas,
and The Untouchables, but lately he has proven himself to
be quite the funny guy. Actually, that was evident back in the 1987
road trip comedy Midnight Run, but it wasn't until last year's
Analyze This that De Niro finally started to be taken seriously
as a comic actor. You can feel the tension the moment he appears
on the screen, but he seems to be having so much fun spoofing his
own image that you would think that someone gave him a happy pill.
Meet the
Parents could almost have been titled There's Something About
Mary's Dad. Once again, Ben Stiller plays the nice-guy-to-a-fault
who goes all out in the name of love, only to get himself into a
heap of trouble. As if losing his luggage and borrowing clothes
from the family wasn't humiliating enough, his name turns out to
be the biggest running joke of the film (just say it out loud, and
you'll see what I mean). His nervous energy and mensh-like behavior
is the perfect compliment to De Niro's structured conservatism,
and together they make one of the most appealingly mismatched couples
of the year.
As for the
rest of the cast, Blythe Danner (who now goes by the name of Gwyneth
Paltrow's Mom) successfully walks the line between being intimidated
by hubby De Niro and not really taking him too seriously. Where
the role could easily have become cartoonish in the hands of another
actress, Danner keeps it real and effective. Teri Polo does her
best as the girlfriend-watching-from-the-sidelines, while Owen Wilson
puts in an inspired performance as Polo's sly, religious, and extremely
wealthy ex-fiancee. Finally, kudos to Jinx the Cat for putting in
the best performance by a feline in any film this year!
Meet the
Parents is a surefire Hollywood crowd-pleaser, but it's also
a social commentary on how racial and class barriers can separate
people from potential new family members. It may not hit you until
long after you leave the theater, but this subliminal message underscores
the film and prevents it from being just another screwball comedy.
Even the scenes that have nothing to do with the actual story--particularly
the airport scene where Stiller has a run-in with the flight-attendant-from-hell--also
end up adding to the effectiveness of the film.
Who knows?
Maybe Meet the Parents will do the impossible and convince
fathers everywhere to be happy on the day that they meet their daughter's
boyfriends. On second thought, maybe not.
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