Meet the Parents

Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: I think you people who rate this movie lowly are missing the point & the true nature of its humor. You're right when you say that it lacks typical comedy of the falling down the stairs, oh-my-God he hurt his head sort. In Meet the Parents, the humor is a bit different. It's in the way Greg Fokker holds his hands up, clasped in prayer, just a bit too high. It's in the way he manages to commit every possible faux pas, and then some. It's how when they're playing volleyball, the moment he starts to try hard, he breaks the girl's nose. It is about how this poor guy is totally unable to understand the customs of the girl's parents. That is Meet the Parents humor.

Rating:
Summary: Top-Rate Humour
Review: Though hardly a 'high-concept' film, this is based around one central idea - a guy goes to meet his girlfriend's parents and everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. I honestly wondered how long they could keep the idea going without it running out of steam or without degenerating into cheezey incredulity. I needn't have feared: the movie sustains itself, even with the simplest of plots, remarkably well. As things go from bad to worse for male nurse, Ben Stiller, a great script and excellent performances from the two lead actors (Stiller and De Niro), ensure that even when events approach high farce, it never becomes forced, and the ridiculous happenings never overstep the mark into lameness.

The humour is not merely physical, though when the comedy does rely on slapstick, it is brilliantly executed. The ongoing joke about the cat, the toilet and the opposeable thumbs (you may have to watch it to understand that) is just one example of the sharp, witty flavour of the dialogue. This movie will have you in stitches.

Rating:
Summary: Overrated to the extreams
Review: A satire? Supposedly yes, but in "Satric comedies" you'll at least get 4 big laughs. Here you don't get even one, and that's a big curse to a lot of this-past-year hit comedies I saw (except "Chicken Run").
It starts with a jinx-happy average joe (Ben Stiller) named Greg Fawker who wants to marry a school teacher (Jay Roach). Before she does, though, she has to make sure it's alright with her parents. It passes with her mom, but her dad (Robert De Niro), a paranoid ex-CIA agent, gets a little...too paranoid.
Sounds like funny comedy, right? No, the trailers/TV commercials have truly deceived you there, it's the direct oppisite.
OK, it's starts off alright, but the middle turns it more serious and even cornier jokes I had to plow through infest this waste of great actors.
I'm starting to sound obnioxious, right? I'm sorry about that, but I just can't stand unfunny comedies. And neither do you. So we are anti-unfunny-humor pals, right? Then trust me on this one.
To the jokes:
Flat, and preditible. There's even one that rips-off a joke similar to that from "Dumb and Dumber": something valueble is knocked over by a cork and what comes in return are disasterous results. In "Dumb and Dumber", a guy accidentley knocks over and kills a snowy owl with a cork, in here ("Meet the Parents", though why do I have to add this part?) Greg knocks over De Niro's mother's ashes with a cork (but what's also pretty predictible and just put in to put some originality to the punchline) the family cat urinates on the ashes.
The acting is plain old grosteque and wooden, even worst than the horrible writing and flat jokes combined ("You can't say bomb on an airplane!" "Bomb, bomb, bomb!").
If you wanna laugh at 2000 comedy material, stick to the trailers of this film (which are strikingly more funny than the film itself), "Chicken Run", or (the unintentionally amusing sci-fi/action/thriller) "Battlefield Earth".
PS: And if you think nothing can flaw it more, it's also boring as well.

Rating:
Summary: About as funny as going to your own funeral
Review: Comedies are probably the hardest films to write, because having a good idea is one thing - having a good wit is another. You can create an action film or horror film quite easily as long as its relatively original, but with comedy you need to be much smarter. About the only thing you can get away with is a bit of cliche with the storyline.

This film is certainly very chilched. You only need take a look at the video box to know what it's about. Surely half the point of pretty much ANY type of film is that there are elements that you don't expect. A guy meet his fiancé's parents and the Dad is very strict and inevitably he messes things up yet it all ends happily. How cute. If I have ruined the film for you, then your powers of logic really are rusty coz I figured it out without even seeing the film.

Now all would be OK if the film was actually funny. After all, a joke is a joke. Simply put, its not. The amount of times I was tempted to leave the room and not bother watching it to the end were off the scale. I cannot remember a single joke or incident worth repeating. It's just one of those cringably unfunny films that makes you feel sorry for the actors involved. If you think I'm just being a bloke, I'm not. Just about every girl I've talked to who's seen the film thought it was about as funny as going to your own funeral. Tied with Scary Movie, it was one of the worst comedy films to come around in the past year or so.

Rating:
Summary: My least favorite movies of all time
Review: There are not enough words to express how BAD this movie is. It actually made me squirm while watching it. If you liked Something About Mary--which was also painful to watch--although it had a funny moment or two (CPR on the dog was a hightlight)--you may like this one too--but it is even worse. If you'd like to see Ben Stiller in a movie that is actually funny and has some heart, check out KEEPING THE FAITH.

Rating:
Summary: Rent it first
Review: I thought this movie was really bad. Not very funny, and you'll only watch it once.

Rating:
Summary: simply awful
Review: I understood that this movie was a satire, but the characters were all so paper-thin and fatally flawed that by the middle of the movie, I felt neither sympathy nor empathy for any of the characters. This movie was poorly written and I'm still searching for any non-masochistic explanation for why it was so popular. I would have given it 0 stars were that an option.

Rating:
Summary: VERY funny and smart film...
Review: For anyone who's been faced with the unique experience of having to ask the parents of your intended for her hand in marriage (as I did, dear reader), you'll know the essential conflict of poor Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), the central character of "Meet the Parents."

Do you just overcome your nervousness (which is substantial, let me tell you) and be yourself, or do you make yourself out to be Bill Gates with a sensitive side?

For Greg, a nice guy who's just a little too insecure to be himself around his intended fiancee's parents, the answer is to weave a tapestry of bull (including the proclamation that you can milk a cat). Of course, it's well-intentioned bull, but it's bull nonetheless, and his father-in-law to be (Robert DeNiro) sees right through it.

Of course, it's easier to be yourself when your future dad-in-law isn't an ex-CIA operative who hooks you up to a lie detector and asks if you've ever watched a porn flick (the needle flickers intently...). It's also a lot easier to win your new father-in-law's affection when the guy doesn't idolize your fiancee's last boyfriend, a self-made yuppie, born-again Christian, and highly skilled woodworker.

All Greg has to sell is that he's a Jewish kid from a farm where they milked cats, and he's a male nurse to boot.

And, of course, not every poor guy who goes to meet his future in-laws ends up flooding their lawn with septic waste, setting their back yard on fire, ruining a wedding, losing the family cat, and having someone else's suitcase - complete with bondage gear - delivered to the family home.

The nice thing about "Meet the Parents," though, is that all these abuses heaped on Greg are never anything but good-natured; if this film's tone had veered even slightly towards cruelty, it simply wouldn't have worked.

Stiller does a great job keeping Greg as a likeable BS artist, not a con artist, and De Niro is terrific as usual as every guy's nightmare father in law. The writing is sharp, and the filmmakers are smart enough to know that the conflict will never go beyond being a good-natured series of misadventures and misunderstandings.

We know Greg is a nice guy who deserves the girl, and her family's respect, but it's just a matter of enduring his pain until his luck turns and his new family begins to accept him.

Come to think of it, when you leave out spray painting cats' tails, isn't that the way it works in most families?

Rating:
Summary: Owen Wilson makes this movie
Review: Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller give strong performances, but it's Owen Wilson's portrayal of ex-fiance Kevin that really made this movie for me. I wish he had more screen time.

Meet the Parents is one of those "what can go wrong next until the hero finally makes good" movies that I generally watch one time. The excellent ensemble cast (particularly Owen) is the reason I bought the DVD. Don't get me wrong, it's also very funny. Five stars for Owen Wilson, four for Meet the Parents.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty funny
Review: Ben Stiller plays Gaylord "Greg" Focker, a male nurse whose deperate need to make a good impression on his fiancee's parents causes him to spend a nightmarish weekend with his future in-laws. He is continually humiliated and belittled, most notably by his bride-to-be's father, a former CIA man played by Robert DeNiro. The results are uneven but generally enjoyable, with a few good laugh-out-loud moments. The fiancee (Teri Polo) frequently comes across as such an insensitive, disloyal person that it is difficult to understand why Greg loves her so much.