Such a disappointment

Rating: Null/10 (29 December 2000)

`Meet The Parents'
It was the idea of my son's partner that we see this comedy as a family (perhaps she's trying to tell me something?), but it was a real disappointment to us all. It may have done brilliantly in the United States, but I found the plot slight and the humour forced. We know from `Analyze This' that Robert De Niro can do comedy and we know from `There's Something About Mary' that Ben Stiller has a wicked way with domestic animals, but neither De Niro as the anally-retentive potential father-in-law nor Stiller as the earnest but unfortunate suitor of de Niro's daughter can overcome an inadequate script with too few real laughs. The humour around the name of the Stiller character (Greg Focker) is both contrived and repetitive and that concerning his ethnicity (Jewish) almost offensive.