# Meet the Parents (2000)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

MEET THE PARENTS (Universal) Starring: Robert DeNiro, Ben Stiller, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Owen Wilson. Screenplay: Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg. Producers: Nance Tenenbaum, Jay Roach, Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro. Director: Jay Roach. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes, drug references) Running Time: 105 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

Not surprisingly, MEET THE PARENTS is being promoted as a film "from the director of AUSTIN POWERS;" when you've got a connection to a $200 million film in Hollywood, you take advantage of it. It just strikes me as an absurdity of the highest order to pump up Jay Roach for his POWERS oeuvre. They were Mike Myers films, plain and simple, and pretending otherwise is like giving Tom Shadyac credit for the success of ACE VENTURA, or Dennis Dugan for BIG DADDY. To his credit, Roach knew enough to mostly get out of Myers' way, showing he understands how to take advantage of a gifted comic performer's strengths. Let's not forget, however, that this is also the director of MYSTERY, ALASKA -- not exactly the second coming of Preston Sturges.

In MEET THE PARENTS, Roach gets to oversee yet another gifted comic performer, and once again the film is primarily effective to the extent that it gets out of that performer's way. Ben Stiller plays Greg Focker, a Chicago male nurse who's ready to pop the question to his girlfriend Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo). But before he does, there's a key test to pass: Pam's no-nonsense father Jack (Robert DeNiro). Greg has gotten an inkling that Jack is a tough man to win over, yet he's optimistic when he and Pam head to upstate New York for the weekend to attend the wedding of Pam's sister. And that's when Greg realizes that Jack may be an impossible man to win over, with his every attempt to make things better inevitably making things worse instead.

With Woody Allen having migrated away from his trademark schlemiel character in recent years, Ben Stiller has become cinema's reigning champion of outsider anxiety as comedy. There's more of an undercurrent of hostility to Stiller's on-screen persona, but he still makes has an uncanny ability to make his characters' frustrations and awkward situations hilarious. MEET THE PARENTS gives Stiller plenty of opportunities to squirm -- notably when he concocts an impromptu recollection about milking the family cat -- and his discomfort is almost always good for a laugh. He also gets a great straight man to work with in DeNiro, whose straight-faced portrayal of the over-protective Jack is just the right counterpoint for Stiller's manic antics. If you're a Ben Stiller fan, you'll probably be a MEET THE PARENTS fan.

Unfortunately, Stiller does have to struggle against an inconsistent script and flaccid direction. Though MEET THE PARENTS is at least subtle enough to avoid make Greg's antagonist an out-and-out villain, it's still primarily a film of broad individual gags. The situations grow more elaborate, and the set pieces more convoluted, but there's no natural build-up to the comedy. Roach's direction misses the right rhythm both for individual scenes (notably the domino effect after Greg unwittingly lets the Byrnes' cat out of the house) and for the film as a whole. There's never any sense that MEET THE PARENTS is building to a humorous crescendo so much as it is doling out punch lines and pratfalls at regular intervals. Every possible situation comes to the expected worst-case scenario for Greg, and the characters come to the expected epiphanies at the expected times.

That the film works in spite of the people behind the camera says a lot for the people in front of the camera. The supporting players support effectively; Owen Wilson, even underused as he is here, still adds an off-beat edge to every scene he's in. MEET THE PARENTS is one of those films where most of the laughs come from waiting for the protagonist's next humiliation, and often such films are as nerve-wracking as they are amusing. Stiller is simply so funny when he's sweating -- and so determined not to be a victim even as he's being victimized -- that the amusement manages to emerge triumphant. It's a shame that he's working with a workmanlike director who cuts off scenes before they've reached their zenith, but it's often the fate of brilliant comics that they can't find brilliant directors to work with. Working with the likes of Mike Myers and Ben Stiller is a smart career move for the Jay Roaches of the cinema world. Even when the performers' gifts manage to emerge, the reverse is rarely true.

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 missed directions:  6.

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