poor Focker

Rating: 6/10 (23 October 2000)

Throughout the film, even at the end, I felt like imploring the guy, 'run for your life! She's not the one!' Pam's neglect of Greg's feelings and most of all her blindness toward her father's obsessiveness demonstrates how we never see our own family the same way other people do. You know your family is weird--but just how weird is only found through throwing a stranger at its mercy.
"Parents" begins as an overprotective-father-versus-boyfriend story, moves toward the ridiculous, but always remains believable. After a while it becomes clear that the real problem between Greg and Jack (Robert DiNiro), Pam's dad, is simple: they just don't get along. We've all come across people we know we don't like from the moment we meet them. Greg's tough luck is that his father-in-law to-be is one of these people.
"Meet The Parents" is good because it gives each character enough of a life that each has something to learn. It's also got a lot of humanity at its core. Most everyone who sees this film will be able to relate to Greg's predicament. Most everyone will recall a time when they were in Greg's shoes--or they'll come to the shocking realization that they were torturing someone and didn't know it at the time.
This is a rare story in which there really is one main character around which everything else revolves. Everything that happens is connected with Greg Focker (Ben Stiller plays it perfectly; he's never been funnier). There are no unnecessary subplots that enhance supporting characters. They don't even bother giving Pam her own life. All she is, from first frame to last, is Greg's girlfriend. Jack is Greg's girlfriend's dad and so on. This puts you inside the main character's world in a way few films do.
While the writers show great control over their material by doing this, they fall short in other areas. Greg's last name, Focker, and the various ways people pronounce it, is a running gag that isn't nearly as funny as the film's creators seem to think it is. Whenever things start getting dull, they pull out the old Focker joke so at least the small-minded people in the audience can get a giggle. There are moments of agony, such as truck tires spraying sewage all over Pam's family, that are so gross you can't believe what you're watching. The goal is to set this lewdness against a backdrop of suburban normalness, which makes it funnier.
Supposedly anyway. More times than not, though, it works. The film does what all good entertainment does: holds a warped mirror up to real life, so we can laugh at ourselves a little.
Grade: C+