Meet the Parents
I got fired this week. Well, there are all sorts of ways to say it that are supposed to make the worker feel better. A company can say "laid-off" or "released" or "asked to resign," and all of that bullshit is supposed to make the canned worker feel a little better. But Family Dollar simply said "fired." They fuckin' called me at home during my shift, because I wasn't there because I was feeling a little hung-over, and Manager Bob said "Fired. I'll call mall security if you step foot in here again."
Why? Well, that's the part that gets me more steamed than a freshly laid dogshit. They claim I stole. They claim I was stealing their fucking lousy dollar merchandise but they can't prove it!
Okay, so I was stealing, but I never got caught doing it. And those fuckers shouldn't be rewarded for correctly guessing that I was stealing. Hell, all I stole was Sprinkles the Shower Clown (and some other shit) and that fucking thing was lame. It's a shower head with a clown's face. We got boxes and boxes of them and I fucking hated them. Every day, piling boxes of that stupid plastic clown's face on the shelves. But, Sprinkles was like an ugly girl you ride next to on the bus every day. After a while, she doesn't seem so ugly and you wonder if her tits are as flabby and pockmarked as her face. Then you don't really care, you just want to see her tits.
So, I ended up wondering if Sprinkles was as fun as the box says. Would I want to "jump in the shower with a clown every morning?" Would that help me wake up before two in the afternoon, or cut back on my drinking or scratching the paint on SUVs? I snuck one home and found out the answer is no, it didn't make me happy at all. And I feel like a fucking pervert washing while that clown watches. I can't even jerk off in the shower anymore.
All of this business about my firing has nothing to do with Meet The Parents, except that the movie is pretty fucking funny, and it distracted me from wanting to go slash my old boss's tires. There is a message here for Hollywood: good movies and cheap beer do more than any government program can to keep the poor and disenfranchised from rising up and eating the rich. Entertain us and we'll leave you alone.
"Meet the Parents" is a remake of a classic from way back in the golden age of movies, 1992. This version credits the story to the original, but the writers and director are different.
Ben Stiller is Greg Focker, an unfortunately named (see, Focker sounds like Fucker, get it?) male nurse who must get permission to marry his girlfriend (Teri Polo) from her father. Polo's younger sister is getting married and that presents an opportunity for Stiller to "meet the parents" and get the father's permission.
Polo's father, hard-ass Robert De Niro immediately distrusts Stiller, and not just because he's not a very good actor. Stiller thinks De Niro is a retired rare flower dealer, but soon learns that he was a CIA operative, nicknamed The Human Lie Detector, for 34 years. De Niro doesn't trust anyone, especially not a nurse who wants to bone his first-born daughter.
De Niro makes a weak attempt at befriending Stiller, but he'd rather torment him and prove him unworthy. He gives Stiller a lie detector test in a dank hidden room, investigates Stiller's claims of high scores on medical school entrance exams, and suspects him of being a pot-head, high as a fucking kite. The deeper Stiller gets in, the harder he works to win De Niro's trust, and the worse it gets. He desecrates De Niro's mother's ashes, gives the bride a black eye, burns down a hand-carved gazebo, and tries to pass off a strange cat as De Niro's beloved pet, which he lost.
The premise of Meet the Parents is pretty old. It's your basic screwball comedy based on misunderstanding. But director Jay Roach does a fine fucking job making the old dog fresh. He keeps the predictable story loose, and the individual scenes funny. While the pacing is a little slow, he draws laughs from some good dialog and a few very good slapstick moments. That is, until the last half-hour.
Writers James Herzfeld and John Hamburg are no comedy geniuses, and they drop some jokes like loads of shit, such as a mistaken suitcase filled with dildos and a misplaced pot pipe. But, they also know their characters and the best laughs are reaction shots. Stuff that could be real bad fucking news in the hands of a hack like Peter Cohen (writer/director/motherfucker of Whipped) is laugh-out loud good here, like Stiller supplying a cat with a spray-painted tail and seting a hand-crafted gazebo on fire.
The cast is damn good, too, which is surprising because it includes Ben Stiller. There's no Jim Carrey mugging, screaming, or high-volume fart jokes. It stays consistently low-key and underplayed, like the cast actually knew they were working with funny shit and didn't feel desperate.
I usually would rather have my fat manic-depressive neighbor Bert hold me down and put his hands down my pants than watch Stiller mope his way through a movie. Here at least, Stiller's given up on the annoying ham he perfected when he was trying to be a serious actor. An added bonus is that there are no scenes of him boning chicks doggy-style, which I was beginning to think was his trademark.
De Niro gives the best performance, though, and it's because he's relaxed. His previous attempts at humor have been about as funny as finding a bleeding cyst in your armpit. His protective and suspicious father plays off the slightly insane men he has always played.
The women in the movie are treated like shit. Screenwriters are mostly men who can't get dates, let alone find a woman to fuck them for free, and they have no idea what ladies are like. So, they write women based on what they learn in a grocery store check-out line. In their world, good, smart women are the pretty-in-an-unthreatening-way ones on the cover of Ladies Home Journal and hot, dumb bad women look like those on the cover of Cosmopolitan. This movie is stock full of the Ladies Home Journal type. Polo is a kindergartner teacher, but that's all we know about her, and all she gets to do is speak in exposition and then step aside to let the men have the punchlines. Why can't Polo be angry, or a drunk, or a thief, like the chicks on Low Rider? I can relate to them. The mother is less interesting than a CBS sitcom. If she's lived with a slightly insane CIA agent for 34 years, wouldn't she be scared shitless of him, or be slightly insane and cruel herself?
Like so many comedies, Meet the Parents can't deliver on the comedic setup and the ending is dull. When there's a half-hour left, it stops being funny so that those grass-fuckers in Hollywood can patch everyone up and deliver a bullshit happy ending. What the fuck is wrong with keeping things a little messy? I mean, my life is a fucking mess, but I'm still happy, so why can't movies end the same way, especially if it means the movie ends funny instead of sappy? Show some fucking balls, Hollywood.
Three fingers for Meet the Parents, an amusing comedy only hampered by Hollywood's fear of women and unhappiness.
So, I'm looking for a job. I think I want to work in a video store where I can make a positive impact on society by making fun of the assholes who rent Adam Sandler movies and convince confused people to get good shit. I want to make $7 an hour (fuck it, I figure ask for a lot and go down if they say no). And no Blockbusters or other shitty stores that don't carry pornos and good movies.