A comedy for everyone

Rating: Null/10 (30 August 2001)

Meet the Parents is a movie about a male nurse Greg Focker, played by Ben Stiller, who is meeting his girlfriend's parents before proposing to her. His girlfriend, Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo,) has an over protective father Jack Byrnes, who is a former CIA agent (Robert De Niro.) From the moment that Jack and Greg meet, Jack feels that he is not good enough for his daughter. So when Jack discovers that Greg is a male nurse, he never lets him forget it by bringing it up in conversation every time that he can. Many hilarious parts of the movie come when Greg is caught in a situation where he has to lie or break the `circle of trust,' which happens quite often. Greg goes from breaking Debbie Byrnes' nose days before she was getting married to losing the dear family cat, Jinxies, to catching the house on fire as well as flooding the backyard with fluids from the septic tank, nearly ruining the wedding. But the funniest part of movie is when you discover that Greg's real name was Gaylord, which meant that his full name was Gaylord Focker. Greg's name was an effective form of a cheep laugh because it was somewhat vulgar but not overly done, and you could always get out at least a giggle when you heard De Niro yell out `Focker!' Even the music couldn't save Greg, when asked about the song `Puff the magic dragon', Greg explained to Jack about its drug meaning, literally `puffing a marijuana cigarette.' This gave the illusion that Greg was a pothead. But the audience sympathized with Greg when he was kicked out of Jack's house. Most of the things that Greg did wrong were because he loved Pam. He was just trying to gain Jack's approval so that he could marry Pam. Only after Greg left did Jack realize that Greg was the one for Pam. Thus the perfect ending happens when Greg is allowed to propose to Pam. Overall, I feel that De Niro was magnificent in portraying the overprotective father because he was quick to jump on the character of Greg at any instant and he gave the impression of the overpowering head of the family. This movie had an excellent supporting cast with Ben Stiller and Teri Polo. Stiller, who also starred in There's Something About Mary, kept up to his usual self, providing plenty of comedy. Director, Jay Roach, who also directed the Austin Powers movies, didn't try anything fancy to overwhelm us, but showed a more sophisticated comedy. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being a masterpiece and 1 being not worthy for the space on the bottom of my garbage can, I give Meet the Parents a 7. The movie has a good cast, good directing and a good story line with plenty of laughs. The only problem is it isn't one of those movies that you see and you are like `wow,' and it changes the way you look certain aspects in life. Overall, it is one of the funniest, if not the funniest movie that I have ever seen.