Meet the Parents - Review

I remember having an argument with my ex-girlfriend about comedy movies. She said that she couldn't watch a movie with tons of second hand embarrassment. Basically meaning, if the character in the film does something wrong or gets embarrassed in any way shape or form, she would turn the movie off because it made her feel uncomfortable. Well, if she is reading this, then this movie is not for her. They could easily rename this film, "Ben Stiller plays a character named Greg Focker and he gets embarrassed for one hour and 45 minutes" and it still would have worked (at least in getting the story aspect right.) Meet the Parents feels like Ben Stiller tried to re-create his successes with There Is Something About Mary because both films feel very similar. Ben Stiller tries to impress a girl or her family and literally everything that can go wrong, will go wrong for him. Now, the awkward dead-pan humour works and the subtle little jokes and expressions on the characters faces can be really funny, but sometimes, you can have too much of a good thing. At some point in this movie, I felt myself thinking, "Okay, this is getting a little out-of-hand." Meet the Parents is a very funny movie, however, I feel like it went just a little overboard in a few places and to be honest, I was starting to see what my ex-girlfriend was talking about with the second hand embarrassment. If you can't handle that stuff, then this movie isn't for you. If you do like this type of humour or you love seeing Robert De Niro in a comedy, then Meet the Parents should definitely be the next item in your Netflix search bar.