Meet The Parents
Cause and effect. Cause and effect. Cause and effect. Sorry, but I tend to murmur under my breath about things that disturb me. No, "cause and effect" as a concept doesn't particularly vex me. I'm in favor of it, and have actually relied on it for sundry predictable outcomes. What I'm having a hard time getting my head around is how a moovie like "Meet The Parents" has managed to scoop up over 100 million dollars of your hard-earned take-home in box office, stay camped out at number one for a month and be as bad as it is. This creates a new set of problems:
Cause: Moovie makes a bucket of money.
Effect: Lots more moovies just like it.
Cause: Big league actor (DeNiro) in vapid but boffo box-office dog.
Effect 1: De Niro laughs all the way to the bank.
Effect 2: De Niro realizes public's not all that picky.
Effect 3: De Niro makes more crap, continues laughing, cashing checks.
"Meet The Parents" has some moments where I was able to laugh along, but most of the real moovie took place in the last twenty minutes. Other than that, it was slow, tedious, mean-spirited and cut from the same thin, shiny, boring fabric as most prime-time television. Not what I go to the moovies for, babes. I can get Ally McBeal for FREE. If you're going to spend two hours in the dark, your time spent should be either restful or enjoyable. This is neither.
But, you pay me to do this, so here goes - "Meet The Parents", with Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Teri Polo, Blythe Danner and Owen Wilson. Written by Greg Glienna, Mary Ruth Clarke, James Herzfeld and John Hamburg. Directed by Jay Roach. MPAA rating PG-13 for sexual content, drug references. Run time 110 minutes.
In "Meet The Parents", Ben Stiller gets to play Greg Focker, a nurse, and in a moment of romantic weakness, he decides that the time is right to ask his beloved Pam, a teacher, to spend the rest of their lives together. He gets the ring, he buys off her students to play along, and just as he's about to pop the question, Pam's cell phone rings. Of course, a ringing phone is much more important than a living human kneeling in front of her, so she answers it. The ensuing conversation leads Greg to understand that Pam would only be available through the good graces and bought-off permission of her father, and gee, when can we go meet them?
They hop a plane to New York to meet the parents. (See, there's the title!!) Dad, Jack Byrnes, (De Niro) is a retired CIA mole who lives for the affection of a mangy toilet-trained cat, but keeps his entire family under constant surveillance and organizes their lives with military precision; mom (Danner) is an agreeable wife, but otherwise an empty vessel. From the minute Greg steps foot in their house, he is harangued, put-down, embarrassed and slighted. His name, occupation and social standing are all suspect, as is his dislike of cats and his systemic adoration of nicotine.
Pam's sister shows up, new fiance in tow - HE'S a doctor, not a lowly nurse - naturally, the family falls all over him. Anything that Greg tries to do in order to endear himself to the hateful, bigoted Byrneses falls flat. It could only get worse when one of Pam's old boyfriends shows up - a spear-side Martha Stewart with more money, talent and appetite for wretched excess than the rest of the cast combined. Of course, he takes Greg down a peg or two as well. If the embattled Greg had found a cure for cancer while cooking hamburgers, the only thing anyone would have noticed was that he undercooked the meat.
This goes on and on. Why Greg never goes completely federal and mows down this miserable pack of uppity suburban pseudo-bluebloods is beyond me. He never stands up for himself or tells the prospective parents-in-law who and what he is or why, his girl leaves him twisting in the wind like an pair of old socks, and his every effort to appease the hateful family turns into an exercise in self-sacrifice. Once, it seemed like everything was going to work out, but the fire department arrived in the nick of time and put out the neighborhood. If ever a house needed burning down, that one did.
Truth is, the acting in "Meet The Parents" isn't all that bad, and given the journeyman cast, it shouldn't be. Mostly, it's the story and the delivery that stinks, and I can't tell from this moovie whether I really like Ben Stiller or not. If he continues to take spineless, voiceless loser roles, the question won't come up again - I'll add him to the short but awful Adam Sandler Memorial List of Hollywood Flotsam. (Don't think that I expect to see Ben Stiller issuing a dire statement asking me to reconsider. Bud who?)
If this is the best that mainstream Hollywood has to offer, expect the neighborhood 'plexes to be converted to paintball ranges or craft fairs, and with a little luck, soon.
It'll only take one cow to get through this one, and you'll have to apologize to the cow yourself. Fortunately, my cows are fairly light sleepers.
Cause: Moovie makes a bucket of money.
Effect: Lots more moovies just like it.
Cause: Big league actor (DeNiro) in vapid but boffo box-office dog.
Effect 1: De Niro laughs all the way to the bank.
Effect 2: De Niro realizes public's not all that picky.
Effect 3: De Niro makes more crap, continues laughing, cashing checks.
"Meet The Parents" has some moments where I was able to laugh along, but most of the real moovie took place in the last twenty minutes. Other than that, it was slow, tedious, mean-spirited and cut from the same thin, shiny, boring fabric as most prime-time television. Not what I go to the moovies for, babes. I can get Ally McBeal for FREE. If you're going to spend two hours in the dark, your time spent should be either restful or enjoyable. This is neither.
But, you pay me to do this, so here goes - "Meet The Parents", with Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Teri Polo, Blythe Danner and Owen Wilson. Written by Greg Glienna, Mary Ruth Clarke, James Herzfeld and John Hamburg. Directed by Jay Roach. MPAA rating PG-13 for sexual content, drug references. Run time 110 minutes.
In "Meet The Parents", Ben Stiller gets to play Greg Focker, a nurse, and in a moment of romantic weakness, he decides that the time is right to ask his beloved Pam, a teacher, to spend the rest of their lives together. He gets the ring, he buys off her students to play along, and just as he's about to pop the question, Pam's cell phone rings. Of course, a ringing phone is much more important than a living human kneeling in front of her, so she answers it. The ensuing conversation leads Greg to understand that Pam would only be available through the good graces and bought-off permission of her father, and gee, when can we go meet them?
They hop a plane to New York to meet the parents. (See, there's the title!!) Dad, Jack Byrnes, (De Niro) is a retired CIA mole who lives for the affection of a mangy toilet-trained cat, but keeps his entire family under constant surveillance and organizes their lives with military precision; mom (Danner) is an agreeable wife, but otherwise an empty vessel. From the minute Greg steps foot in their house, he is harangued, put-down, embarrassed and slighted. His name, occupation and social standing are all suspect, as is his dislike of cats and his systemic adoration of nicotine.
Pam's sister shows up, new fiance in tow - HE'S a doctor, not a lowly nurse - naturally, the family falls all over him. Anything that Greg tries to do in order to endear himself to the hateful, bigoted Byrneses falls flat. It could only get worse when one of Pam's old boyfriends shows up - a spear-side Martha Stewart with more money, talent and appetite for wretched excess than the rest of the cast combined. Of course, he takes Greg down a peg or two as well. If the embattled Greg had found a cure for cancer while cooking hamburgers, the only thing anyone would have noticed was that he undercooked the meat.
This goes on and on. Why Greg never goes completely federal and mows down this miserable pack of uppity suburban pseudo-bluebloods is beyond me. He never stands up for himself or tells the prospective parents-in-law who and what he is or why, his girl leaves him twisting in the wind like an pair of old socks, and his every effort to appease the hateful family turns into an exercise in self-sacrifice. Once, it seemed like everything was going to work out, but the fire department arrived in the nick of time and put out the neighborhood. If ever a house needed burning down, that one did.
Truth is, the acting in "Meet The Parents" isn't all that bad, and given the journeyman cast, it shouldn't be. Mostly, it's the story and the delivery that stinks, and I can't tell from this moovie whether I really like Ben Stiller or not. If he continues to take spineless, voiceless loser roles, the question won't come up again - I'll add him to the short but awful Adam Sandler Memorial List of Hollywood Flotsam. (Don't think that I expect to see Ben Stiller issuing a dire statement asking me to reconsider. Bud who?)
If this is the best that mainstream Hollywood has to offer, expect the neighborhood 'plexes to be converted to paintball ranges or craft fairs, and with a little luck, soon.
It'll only take one cow to get through this one, and you'll have to apologize to the cow yourself. Fortunately, my cows are fairly light sleepers.
