Meet the Parents is a surprisingly funny comedy starring Robert De Niro as retired florist/CIA Interrogation Specialist Jack Byrnes. Jack is an overprotective father determined to prove that his precious first born daughter’s latest fiancée, Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), like all others previous to him, isn’t worthy of her heart, or any other part for that matter. Daughter Pam (Teri Polo) has brought Greg, for the first time, from their apartment in Chicago to her parents’ secret-camera equipped house in Oyster Bay, Long Island for her sister’s wedding. Greg sincerely tries to make an honorable first impression with people he has little in common with, but everything he says and does is misinterpreted and eventually, Jack dismisses Focker as a cat-hating, Jewish, doper male nurse with a near-obscene last name. Eventually, Byrne even gets Pam to buy into his suspicions and it’s not until the final frames that everything gets sorted out and Greg’s welcomed home again. Proving that not only does love conquer all, but sometimes it can even beat a lie detector.
What makes ’Meet The Parents’ work, aside from the tension that director Jay Roach (’Austin Powers’, ’The Spy Who Shagged Me’) was able to capture between De Niro and Stiller, is how well Jim Herzfeld’s script satirizes Focker’s situation, a place most adults have been at least once or twice. As played by Stiller, in the least annoying role of his career, Greg is just a regular guy trying to at best break even in a no-win scenario. Focker is stuck behind a weighty eight ball, resolved to impress a prospective father in-law who’d rather see him ridden out of town on a rail, than standing at the altar beside Pam in tux and tails. Jack’s not giving Greg any breaks, or benefits of doubt. Things go from bad to perverse when Greg admits to liking dogs more than cats, breaks Jack’s mother’s burial urn, smashes Pam’s sister’s nose in a family water volleyball game, is found (mistakenly) with a pot pipe in his jacket, overflows the house’s septic tank and is responsible for burning down the hand-carved altar Pam’s ex-boyfriend had created for her sister’s wedding. And if that weren’t more than enough, he also looses Jinx, Jack’s prized Himalayan cat and spray paints one from the animal shelter to try and pass it off as the genuine feline. To put a new twist on an old cliché, you only get one chance to make your worst impression and Greg does a stellar job of ’’Focking’’ up his shot at crashing the sacred Byrne family inner circle, a place much more ’’square’’ than it is round.
Though the movie’s premise is stretched from far to farcical, it is a story anyone who has survived a first weekend with the in-laws can relate to. Where do we sleep? Which toilet can’t I flush? These and other universal questions Focker tries to answer, each time incorrectly. You really do feel sorry for the guy, especially when he shows up for breakfast the first morning in Jack’s pajamas with a messy head freshly visited by the ’’hair fairy.’’ Focker’s luggage was lost by the airlines, with Pam’s engagement ring, and the baggage recovery is one of the movie’s many subplots. At breakfast he’s greeted by surprise by the entire Byrne family who are in the midst of planning Pam’s sister’s wedding. Anyone who’s had to meet new relatives before at least three cups of coffee can relate.
Teri Polo (’Felicity’) isn’t given much to do as Pam, but she does a fine job of looking like she really could be the daughter of her movie mom Blythe Danner (’The Prince of Tides’). Danner is capable and believable as Jack’s slightly weary wife Dina, who has seen better men than Stiller fail to cut De Niro’s Grey Poupon. Owen Wilson (’Shanghai Noon’) also makes the most of his role as Kevin, Pam’s dreamboat ex-boyfriend who is now a successful doctor with a mansion, swimming pool and evangelical viewpoints that fall somewhere to the right of Pat Robertson.
In much the same way as ’What Lies Beneath’ was a horror movie for grown-ups, ’Meet The Parents’ is a fun comedy for folks too old for ’Bring It On’, but who still want something to cheer about at the water cooler or the next holiday gathering. It’s not as twisted as ’Cecil B. Demented’ or as carnal as ’The Kings Of Comedy’, but it’ll still provide plenty of smiles, especially if you’ve ever had to meet the parents yourself.