Meet The Parents is about a male
nurse (Ben Stiller) who wishes to impress his
girlfriend's (Teri Polo) father (Robert DeNiro)
with the hope to gain his permission to marry
her. Bring on the farce!
Meet The Parents has a great script,
some fine comedy and a couple of great set pieces,
and has nice pacing. But..............
Perhaps the father should have been played by
a scene-stealing, unfamiliar character actor
rather than a star. DeNiro didn't have that
over-the-top underwear-soiling menace that would
have made the character a joy. This might have
been a misjudgement by the director (Jay Roach).
If the father had been a close relative of Max
Cady, of Cape Fear infamy... now
that would have shot up the adrenaline-flood
terror factor a mile! The whole point of the
Father character is that he should have been
ultra-intimidating, absolutely psychopathically
scary, you DON'T upset this dude AT ANY COST!!!
Not if being torn limb from limb would ruin
your day.
Another intense irritation was that the key
plot points and surprise moments were all shown
in the trailer (as seen in England). Watching
Meet the Parents, those moments
should have been climactic, peaking our enjoyment.
Instead, having had the trailer forced down
our throats, watching those highlight scenes
was like watching a tired repeat. Worse, several
times one finds oneself sitting through a build-up
to a punchline that was shown in the trailer.
Instead of a summit of pleasure the effect was
a sinking feeling.
And all the time I found myself wondering when
the next trailer scene would crop up. As if
this film was not predictable enough.
Gripes over, Meet The Parents
was good, a very watchable farce indeed. That
is thanks to the above average script and Stiller,
a fun actor to watch. Shame he was upstaged
by that wretched trailer.
The
cynical Hollywood execs responsible for the
spoiler trailer apologise for ruining the experience
of actually watching this movie and promise
not to do it again.
Add your comment to this page
 | | | | | | From: |
Jackie | Subject: | 2004-06-20 23:58:25 |
| | | | | | From: |
ryan | Subject: | 2006-02-09 11:21:00 |
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