Robert De Niro’s scowl has entered the cultural shorthand that generally presages entry into the Smithsonian, where it can lie in state next to the Fonz’s jacket, Archie Bunker’s chair and Cher’s hair. Alec Baldwin’s quick assumption of that martial frown in a ”Saturday Night Live” sketch brought the house down a few years ago. It’s as if Mr. De Niro recognized that his own wattage rises in direct proportion to his glower; when his face cracks into a wide-open grin, he looks like an insanely happy 6-year-old, and he couldn’t be more harmless.
Lately Mr. De Niro has taken to mocking his own brutish electricity; he did a burlesque of it in ”Analyze This.” And as Jack Byrnes in the likable new comedy ”Meet the Parents,” he unleashes it on Greg (Ben Stiller). ”Meet the Parents” presents Mr. De Niro as any man’s worst nightmare: the father of the woman he loves. This picture plays on the collective response to his hair-trigger intensity, but Mr. Stiller doesn’t respond very well. He’s agitated and unnerved; his eyes grow ever wider; he lies like a man trying to avoid the Chair, instead of taking the Fifth Amendment, as Joe Pesci does in the movies in which he appears with Mr. De Niro.
As Greg, Mr. Stiller, who has become the hood ornament for anxiety, is heading off for a weekend with the parents of his girlfriend, Pam (Teri Polo). The movie could be Philip Roth’s take on ”The In-Laws,” the classic paranoid comedy built around the fear of being spot-welded to a family much weirder than your own. Or it could be an extended version of the scene in which the pale, wired Christopher Walken makes a suicidal confession to Woody Allen in ”Annie Hall” and then drives the horrified Mr. Allen to the airport.
The rustic home in that suburb where Greg goes with Pam is a WASP dreamland of trees and circular driveways; it could be the kind of place Mel Brooks used to describe as Connecticut, Conn. Greg learns he can’t tell Pam’s parents that she lives with him or that he smokes, a habit Jack considers a sign of weakness. Greg is even more uncomfortable revealing that he’s a nurse. His attempts to ingratiate himself with this family, which is blonder than a Britney Spears video, go badly and turn even worse when he learns that Pam’s father really isn’t a retired florist.
In fact, Jack is a former C.I.A. profiler, and Greg can’t get past Jack’s suspicions and his very, very close relationship with his daughter. The director, Jay Roach, uses the countryside for its too-quietness: Martha Stewart’s ”Night of the Living Dead.” The picture feels as compulsively fastidious as Jack himself, and when it gets into a groove, it seems to be making fun of Jack and Greg’s incompatible neuroses, which send them into the kind of role-playing with which Jack is far more familiar.
He treats Greg as if he were a perp, and this antsy city boy is so afraid of being humiliated that the untruths he spins are whoppers. Things don’t get any easier when Pam’s sister, her husband-to-be and her future in-laws show up, and their ease with the Byrneses is directly opposite to Greg’s jitters. Mr. Roach keeps things going at a simmer for long periods, raising the characters’ levels of discomfort. He has a great deal of trust in his performers and gives them time to develop their own rhythms, as he did in the Austin Powers movies and to some extent in ”Mystery, Alaska,” or what was left of it by the time it hit theaters.
Mr. Stiller and Owen Wilson, who plays Pam’s ex-boyfriend, come into the picture with an established relationship; their scenes together in ”Permanent Midnight” are the best in that movie, and the prickly competition they had going on in that picture can be found here, too. Though Mr. Wilson’s character, Kevin, is supposed to be a golden-boy ideal, he is superb at neutralizing his own corn-silk perfection. Kevin loves to hear himself talk; he’s not so much convinced of his own charm as fascinated by what comes out of his mouth. Mr. Wilson has turned a stoned self-absorption into a comic style; he seems to be watching the words form in midair before him, as if they were wishes materializing.
As Pam’s mother, Blythe Danner has an out-of-it Yankee eccentricity of her own, and most of the supporting cast members — like Kali Rocha as the flight attendant who uses her peppiness as a weapon — are fully invested in their roles. In ”Meet the Parents,” everything has been dusted and placed in a perfect spot on a shelf. Sometimes the movie is a little too meticulous and tidy. It is about the classic fear of being branded the outsider, and in this case, no one bothers to hide his feelings.
The comedy might have been a bit sharper and less of a one-joke setup if Greg were a little less openly derided and if his concerns were amplified because he wasn’t sure where he stood with Pam’s family. Instead he is stepping right into Jack’s expectations; when it turns out that he prefers dogs to cats, Jack dismisses pooches as emotionally shallow. This is a high-concept comedy, though, and none of the jokes are forced, which makes ”Meet the Parents” a singular achievement.
Meet the Parents (2000)
Directed by: Jay Roach
Starring: Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Teri Polo, Blythe Danner, Nicole DeHuff, Jon Abrahams, Owen Wilson, Phyllis George, James Rebhorn, Kali Rocha, Judah Friedlander
Screenplay by: Greg Glienna, Mary Ruth Clarke
Production Design by: Rusty Smith
Cinematography by: Peter James
Film Editing by: Greg Hayden, Jon Poll
Costume Design by: Daniel Orlandi
Set Decoration by: Karin Wiesel
Music by: Randy Newman
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, drug references and language.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures (North America), DreamWorks Pictures (International)
Release Date: October 6, 2000
Visits: 128
