Meet the Parents

Good farce should be like a jazz riff. It should build and twist and turn, making every phrase seem at once surprising and inevitable. Jay Roach strives for this ideal in the new comedy “Meet the Parents,” and periodically the picture does achieve the heights of inspired lunacy to which he aspires. Roach, who helmed the “Austin Powers” films, is no stranger to comedy. He knows what’s funny, and how to shoot it for good effect. He has a good sense of timing and pacing as well, and knows enough not to wear out his welcome, or that of his jokes. The script by Herzfeld and Hamburg may not be a masterpiece of dramatic architecture, but it is sturdy enough to support the gags, and that’s all they needed. They concoct a number of comic scenarios, each of which starts with the most trivial of incidentals (a leaky toilet, a potted plant, a pack of cigarettes) and then spins wildly out of control. The story, such as it is, concerns Greg (Stiller), a nurse who lives in Chicago. Greg decides to propose to his girlfriend Pam (Polo), a schoolteacher, but at the last second he learns, accidentally, that Pam thinks it is a fine idea for a suitor to ask a woman’s father for permission to marry before actually proposing.

Through a stroke of the highest fortune, Pam’s sister is getting married, providing a great excuse for a trip to meet the prospective in-laws, during which time Greg hopes to have a moment alone with Pam’s father to ask the fateful question. So Pam and Greg travel back east to Pam’s childhood home, Greg intent upon making a good impression. The comedy mostly stems from Greg’s complete and utter failure to make anything like a good impression. It doesn’t help that Pam’s father Jack (DeNiro) is a prospective son-in-law’s worst nightmare, a hard-as-nails former CIA interrogator who runs his family like the captain of a destroyer, and harbors a deep sense of suspicion about everyone, most particularly men who come to call on his daughter. It is spoiling nothing to reveal that Greg’s every effort to impress Jack goes completely haywire, that every innocuous comment he makes somehow manages to reflect badly on him, that everything he does to try to be a good guy ends up making him look at best a fool, and at worst, a dope smoking, malicious pervert.

Stiller plays his patented hapless schlemiel role (see “There's Something About Mary”), and I fear that he may be going to that particular well a bit too often. But he maintains exquisite comic timing, and an impressive willingness to look like a complete idiot if the situation calls for it, which it does repeatedly. Stiller is funny, but the real standout is De Niro, who by now has to be acknowledged as a tremendous comic actor. Granted his funniest work has involved spoofing himself (“Analyze This” comes to mind), but comic acting is acting, after all, and everyone knows that DeNiro can act. His Jack is a great creation, a man who cannot quite leave the rigors of the Cold War behind as he grapples with such civilized functions as seeing to his daughter’s wedding. The sparring between Jack and Greg occupies most of the picture, with time out for Pam’s sister’s fiancé’s family to ridicule and harass Greg as well. By the time the worst weekend of Greg’s life is drawing to a close, you can’t help but feel bad for the guy. Still, when I watch a farce, there is always that little, nagging voice of exasperation in the back of my head saying, “for crying out loud, this could all be resolved so simply if...” In this case, if Greg wasn’t such a nincompoop, and if he had even one iota of self-esteem. The farcical riffing isn’t perfect, then, but most of it works, and most people will walk out feeling like they got their eight bucks worth of laughs. (10/18/2000)