Meet the Parents: Movie Review, DVD Review (2000)

Directed by Jay Roach, written by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg, based on a story by Greg Slienna and Mary Ruth Clarke, 105 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2000)

The new Jay Roach comedy, “Meet the Parents,” follows the unfortunately named Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), a klutzy male nurse from Chicago who falls in love with Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo), nearly proposes to her in a rush of affection, but stops just short of doing so when it occurs to him that he should first get permission from Pam’s father.

As sweet and as endearing as that is, Greg’s experience proves anything but when he and Pam fly to Long Island to spend a weekend at her parent’s home.

There, as the Byrneses prepare to marry off their other daughter, Debbie (Nicole DeHuff), we meet Pam’s parents--her neurotic mother, Dina (Blythe Danner), and her ruthless, intense and fiercely over-protective father, Jack, a grimacing WASP played with sneering bravado by Robert De Niro.

This time out, De Niro has toned down the “You laughin’ at me?” shtick he displayed in “Analyze This,” and the result is a funnier, more grounded performance that balances “Parent’s” frequent moments of lunacy with a softer punch.

Well, a slightly softer punch. “Meet the Parents” is, after all, a comedy of manners where one can learn all the tricks of how to milk a cat, how to potty train a cat, and, perhaps more refreshing, how one’s mother’s ashes can be used as a smart and sudden substitute for kitty litter.

Since the film comes from Roach, whose “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” and its hilarious sequel, “The Spy Who Shagged Me,” delighted in exposing the baser side of human behavior, none of its raunch comes as a surprise. But what does surprise is how unforced its comedy is given the tight, often predictable demands of its narrow plot.

Roach and his screenwriters, Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg, wisely keep the tension high between Greg and Jack, never skirting away from it to get an easy laugh from an easy joke. Instead, the humor comes from this tension and, by extension, from the film’s outlandish situations--such as when Greg, who’s Jewish, is asked to say grace at the dinner table, or when it occurs to Jack that if his daughter should marry Greg, whom he considers a worthless bum, her full married name would be Pam Martha Focker.

And that, in this funny film, is just unacceptable.

Grade: B+