Zipper fly front with black vinyl stripes waistband and leg opening. Slash pockets with metal studs.
Ben Stiller is so comfortable serving up his own discomfort and embarrassment for our amusement, he makes it look easy. Unlike many previous practitioners of humor-through-self-humiliation, from early Woody Allen to the late Chris Farley, Stiller doesn’t look like he’s supposed to be the butt of the joke. With his frat boy good looks and nice guy demeanor, he’s more like the jock next door who skates by on his charm than the dorky nebbish who accidentally zips his genitals up in his pants on prom night. His reassuringly bland presence makes his awkwardness and inevitable mortification that much more tangible; you can easily put yourself in his shoes and feel the flop sweat soak into your soles.
In Meet the Parents, Stiller plays Greg Focker, a male nurse (both surname and occupation are treated – ill-advisedly – as bottomless reservoirs of gut-busting humor) in love with Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo, this month’s Heather Graham). Greg is about to propose to Pam when he learns that her sister will be married the following weekend, having finally secured the blessing of the Byrnes’ father, Jack (Robert De Niro). Picking up on the vibe that Jack’s permission is more than a mere formality in the Byrnes clan, Greg decides to postpone popping the question until after he has met Pam’s parents.
Upon arriving at the Byrne family’s Oyster Bay homestead, Greg immediately fails to hit it off with Jack, an overly literal no-nonsense type with little patience for Greg’s attempts at ingratiating humor. As Greg soon discovers, Jack is an ex-CIA operative (shades of The In-Laws) with hidden cameras stashed around the house and a deeply suspicious attitude towards anyone with designs on entering the Byrne family (or as he calls it, "the circle of truth"). Jack’s first impression of his prospective son-in-law gets worse as the weekend progresses, with the increasingly hapless Greg setting off an escalating series of comical calamities, causing thousands of dollars worth of property damage and millions in royalty payments to Jerry Lewis.
Meet the Parents began life as a short film by comedian Greg Glienna, and it probably should have stayed there. It certainly hasn’t been re-imagined as a feature-length project. The plot chugs along in fits and starts, and there’s no third act to speak of – the action is yanked to an unconvincing halt. Director Jay Roach, who shaped the original Austin Powers into a fizzy pop confection, here contributes a flat, overlit TV-ready look, and
Screenwriters Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg were apparently too busy rifling through
When it comes to comedy, De Niro’s track record is decidedly mixed. In previous efforts (We’re No Angels, Rocky & Bullwinkle), he’s often tried too hard, scrunching his face into a crinkly mug and sputtering his lines in a frantic effort to generate laughs. There’s a bit of that here as well, but as in last year’s Analyze This, De Niro has generally learned to