Meet the Parents

Meet the Parents follows Ben Stiller’s Greg Focker as he agrees to finally meet his girlfriend’s (Teri Polo’s Pam) mother (Blythe Danner’s Dina) and father (Robert De Niro’s Jack), with wackiness ensuing as Greg goes to increasingly absurd lengths to win the couple’s approval. It’s an inherently appealing premise that is, at the outset, employed to winning effect by Jay Roach, as the director offers up an appealing opening half hour that’s anchored by the stars’ uniformly likeable work and the inclusion of several genuinely hilarious instances of comedy (ie the now infamous cat-milking bit). There does reach a point, however, wherein the emphasis is predominantly placed on jokes and gags of an eye-rolling desperate nature – ie Greg, a Jew, attempts to say grace to unreasonably (yet predictably) broad effect – which ultimately ensures that large swaths of the proceedings feel as though they’d be more at home within a garden-variety sitcom. And while the charisma of the various performers proves instrumental in cultivating a relatively watchable atmosphere, Meet the Parents is ultimately unable to overcome the pervasive artificiality that’s been hard-wired into Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg’s screenplay – with the pointlessly melodramatic third act cementing the film’s place as lamentably disappointing misfire.

** out of ****

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