FIRST COMES LOVE. THEN COMES THE INTERROGATION.
Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is set to meet his fiancée’s (Teri Polo) parents for the first time, but trying to impress her father (Robert De Niro) is no cakewalk. A box-office smash where everything that can go wrong for Stiller’s character does; that always seems to be a recipe for success in his films. Stiller’s great and De Niro is quite effective as the conservative control-freak in-law with a career in the CIA. The concept is a good set-up for a comedy… but too few sequences are genuinely funny. There’s something wrong when the best gag in the movie is Greg’s last name.
2000-U.S. 108 min. Color. Directed by Jay Roach. Song: ”A Fool in Love” (Randy Newman). Cast: Robert De Niro (Jack Byrnes), Ben Stiller (Greg Focker), Blythe Danner (Dina Byrnes), Teri Polo (Pam Byrnes), James Rebhorn, Jon Abrahams… Owen Wilson, Kevin Hart.
Trivia: Co-produced by De Niro. The film is a remake of a 1992 low-budget movie. Jim Carrey and Christopher Walken were allegedly considered for roles. Followed by two sequels, starting with Meet the Fockers (2004).
Quote: “Yeah, you gave me the wrong suitcase. Uh-huh. Yes, it’s a black Samsonite. Uh-huh. Ok, well don’t you think that the Samsonite people, in some crazy scheme in order to make a profit, made more than one black suitcase?” (Stiller, talking on the phone to the airline)
