Midweek Mention... Meet the Parents

Meet the Parents

Sidey: in in a separate discussion. Offline, you just mentioned something gonna be junk. And Chris mentioned two and a half stars.

Easily better than both of those two metrics. Is the film the Comedy classic that we're gonna talk about now, Pete, I know you're very

Reegs: excited.

Sidey: It's Meet the Parents. Someone did nominate this online. Let hang on.

Reegs: We should

Pete: who? Name and shame.

Sidey: should credit them with this numbers. I think it might have been.

Cris: a great shout. I think

Sidey: I think it might have been Andy Jameson. And we really want to,

Pete: that speaks

Reegs: Does Andy know Joe?

Cris: Yes. They're good mates. Yeah.

Reegs: Because Joe recommended Sicario for us, which we may have already talked about or not, and we loved that.

Sidey: Oh, we might talk about it later.

Cris: Yeah, we might

Pete: Or before.

Cris: but also they're good mates so they know what they're talking about. They, they like their movies and they know what they're talking

Pete: Well, Jaymo doesn't, if he

Sidey: well, we, what we did do is we spoke.

Dan: fired,

Sidey: We spoke, or we may speak about Shallow grave and thanks very much to VSY for that shout. And we've had quite a few requests for Blade Runner and I think that possibly, Pete, you had never seen that.

Pete: I, I had seen

Sidey: You

had seen it? Okay.

Cris: I've never seen it.

Sidey: So we, we probably talk about that or we probably have, or we, or we have already spoken about that. Andy Jameson, it would be Andy Jameson. We were wondering who nominated this classic probably best ever comedy. And it was jmo, he said it would be fitting that Meet the parents has discussed great banter.

Jinx the Cat, who's a massive bell end and the obvious circle of trust.

So there is all that stuff within the film, which we're gonna talk about now. Pete, I can see your like, Chomping at the bit. Obviously we've all seen this. It's a comedy classic starring Ben Stiller. Bobby DeNiro,

Dan: DeNiro

Pete: breaks my heart

Sidey: Owen Wilson,

Pete: was associated with this

Sidey: well

and producer of as well.

So he stumped up that he had to, this is actually a remake

Reegs: It is, yeah. An independent film. Yeah. That Spielberg bought the rights to, if you believe it or not. So yeah.

Pete: What was this a remake of? Was it

Sidey: It was Meet the Parents?

Yeah, it was they say short film, but it's still like 70 odd minutes. But it was cobbled together for like a hundred mil, a hundred grand, not a hundred mil, a hundred grand. And they couldn't find anyone to kind of, distributor for it. So

Reegs: but it's a good concept right there in the title, isn't it? I mean, you know, you kind of know what you're gonna get.

Probably a pretty broad comedy.

Sidey: Yeah. And with Ben Stiller, you know, it's gonna be that kind of excruciating. Kind of embarrassing style of

comedy

Reegs: And Jay Roach as well

Sidey: Yeah. Everything that could go wrong, will go wrong, will go wrong. And more so,

Reegs: yeah.

Pete: therefore making it utterly predictable and tiresome.

Sidey: I guess so it starts off with Ben Still's character Greg as he's known at this point. Yeah. Practicing his. Proposal to some grimy old guy in the hospital. And Greg is a nurse. He's a male nurse, which is the butt of many jokes from Janero later on. And then it's, it progresses to Greg going to meet his wife to try and take her out for a bike to eat, is the premise.

And he's got the kids, she's a kindergarten teacher and he's somehow managed to loop the kids into this proposal idea and the kids will hang up. Like, you know, letters of Will you marry me? But as he's just about to pop the question, her phone rings and her sister's just got engaged to some dude that she's known for five minutes.

But the guy had the wherewithal to

Reegs: yeah,

Sidey: Jack Robert De Niro scout first. And so that throws Ben Stiller for oh shit, you

Reegs: clearly he can't undermine the wedding, but also he's understood this crucial piece of information that he needs to get the approval of.

Sidey: Yeah. He's not even met them.

No, he's not even met them at all. But he's,

Reegs: I, I believe over the course of the par of the movie, he may well meet the parents.

Sidey: Yes.

He seemed film, they've been dating longer than the, the sister who's got married. Yeah. And the stuff. And so now we, we can Right. Get right into it.

So they're gonna travel, uh uh, they're sort of. The parents are far away that it

Reegs: is it Long

Island or something there?

Yeah.

Sidey: Because there's some hilarity to do with some lost luggage. They get to the, they get to the parents' house and

Reegs: is this with, with the bomb, with the

Sidey: no, that's later on there. But it is like a badge of honor that Pam. Played by Terry Polo named after For a mint. Yes. She had the wherewithal to just take, carry on luggage, but Greg had checked his and his luggage has

Reegs: and it's an a family thing, right? Because almost as soon as when they do meet them, which we're gonna come onto, they bring that up, don't I? Make sure you always pack.

Sidey: Yeah. It's one of the like great laughs in this film, isn't it? Yeah. Luggage. Pete, I can tell you're absolutely loving this. So they, then they meet the parents. And there's a backstory to Jack that he is a florist and, and so Ben Still's character Greg has gone to great lengths to. Acquire this rare,

Reegs: it, the first words are brilliant when he is talking about the car, they say geniuses pick green.

But you didn't pick it. Just undermine him just like straight away. And then, yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: And he's got him this orchid and then, but he just gives him a, a pot, you know? Yeah. With soil and they're like, Okay, great. And it's like, but it's such and such a flower. Yeah. And you can tell that it's a cover story, you know?

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: hasn't got a fucking

Reegs: Well, yeah. At that point he's just like completely nonplused by the gift. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. It's fucking really funny. And

Reegs: And he starts digging straight.

They,

they mine a rich seam of comedy, Pete around seen the film. You know, I haven't

Sidey: I know. And you

Pete: which is why I hate it so much and I definitely can't remember. Are we coming up

Cris: Surely you remember the beginning of it

Pete: I, I don't re The bit I remember that was like, so like fucking obvious and hideous was the, the, the, like they specifically reference at the gaff.

And I dunno if this is now or in, in the, at some point in the film, In the gav, the grandmother's ashes up on,

Sidey: it's straight away.

They go for, they have dinner that

Pete: Right. So as soon as they fuck him, and then when you just like, I mean, there'll be quite a lot of people that watch this film who didn't see it coming, and I wasn't one of those.

And so then I'm like, okay, he's

Sidey: smash in its defense, the ashes, they don't take long to actually do it.

No, the but the, the better bit of that scene is when he has to say grace and it is fucking excruciating when, you know, they is like, oh, thanks for the fucking food, but he drags it out for

Reegs: Lord, oh, please help. Yeah.

Sidey: everyone's looking around like, you know, um, brilliant, brilliant comedy.

Reegs: he finds himself like going down a blind alley telling a story about how he milked a cow.

Yeah.

You can milk anything with nipples.

I

have nipples, Greg?

Sidey: Yeah. Then I think the next day, because he has no luggage yet Greg has to borrow some of Jack's clothes, and so he's feeling ill at ease. But then he's like, well, I think he only borrows some pajamas. Then it's, he has to borrow the brother, the younger brother.

Has

Reegs: he been given the lie detector test

Sidey: no, that's really late on. He has to borrow some of the brother and it turns out that the brother is a stoner. So whilst everything is like run with fucking military precision, it seems like the younger brother or the, the, the, the son of, of the family just is able to just get away sco free with everything.

So they borrow some clothes with him and then they have this car journey where they're listening to puff the magic dragon and Greg says, oh, you know,

actually about

smoking

Reegs: people think that's about smoking marijuana.

Sidey: And then he finds in the jacket that when they're trying on suits for the wedding, that he's got some sort of marijuana smoking paraphernalia.

Yeah. In one of the pockets, which while he's looking at it, lo and behold he gets caught by Jack and so like he's on the back foot again because he doesn't now, doesn't fucking trust him. And it's all about this fucking circle of trust.

Reegs: And he can't give up Denny the brother

Sidey: Yeah. He won't sell him out cuz he's not gonna do that.

So he just kind of has to take the hit for that and things start to escalate. So. They meet the sister Pam's sister who's getting engaged to this fucking

Reegs: it's an amazing character. Owen Wilson?

Sidey: No, he's the ex, he's Pam's ex. It's the guy Pam's sister who's getting married. Her father-in-law is a doctor, he's a plastic surgeon, and the son is some kind of something in the medical profession and they just like completely humiliate. Yeah. Greg for being a nurse. And he says, well, Pam sticks up and said what he did is like medical qualifications, but he just didn't wanna be a doctor.

He preferred the level of care that he could give as a nurse, not bit. And so that plays out later when Jack does the background check on him as Greg.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Because he finds out that Greg Focker didn't take his MCATs.

Reegs: That's right.

Sidey: I've got his MCAT scores for you. Do you want them?

Reegs: Yes, please.

Sidey: So they are a P, you probably know this already, but the MCATs are scored out of 15.

He got 14 for verbal reasoning, 13 for physical sciences, 15 for biological sciences, and an R on the writing sample, which is very high,

Reegs: Wow.

Sidey: Wow. So he aced his MCATs.

Reegs: Aced them.

Sidey: So he's just constantly getting belittled and then they meet Pam's ex, who they're all fucking really pally with, and he has whittled down from a single tree this thing that yeah, they're gonna get

Reegs: as your people might call it,

a hoppa. It's a traditional Jewish wedding. Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: And he's lacked it to the nth degree, which may or may not be important later on.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: So there's that. And then they, they have a scene where

Cris: you remember that Pete?

Pete: No, this the, I checked

Sidey: out. Do, do you remember the water polo?

Right.

Cris: you have to. You

Sidey: can't. So

Pete: the ashes bit.

Sidey: so Owen Wilson. Owen Wilson's got this big palatial gaff and he's done all this stuff and he's showing off and they're on a really tight schedule and Jack's shouting, and right now it's fucking food and this, that, and the other time.

Reegs: well, he failed

Sidey: and water polo and.

It's fucking super competitive, right? The, the water polo, which just teeing you up for some like great laughs and Greg's constantly letting his team down. So he's got like the the plastic surgeon guy, Jack and the brother. Yeah. And he keeps missing his shots and eventually they tee him up and he spikes the ball and wouldn't you fucking believe it?

But it hits the bride to be in the face breaks. I think it like gives her a black eye.

Cris: Yeah. Well I think both black eyes

Sidey: Yeah. So she's got a bit of a shiner.

Yeah.

At the same

Cris: Great scene by the way. He gets angry and Yeah.

So

Sidey: it in Slowmo. It's a fucking winner. And then he's, it turns out he's also taken a shit in the toilet because he is not allowed to sleep in the same room as Pam.

That's a no-no. So he's in the. In the den and they said to him, don't use the fucking toilet because it's bit knackered. And he has, and he's flushed it, and that has caused their septic tank to overflow. Who doesn't love a good shit gag? Yeah.

Cris: Oh,

Reegs: Doesn't he try to blame it on the cat?

Sidey: He does. Try and blame it on the cat because there's been a setup earlier where Mr.

Jinx has been taught how to flush the toilet. Yeah. But anyway

Reegs: funny, Pete to see him get in these

Sidey: what is

Reegs: situations and like, you want him to tell the truth cuz you think that'll get him out of it, but he digs himself in deeper into, that's part of the comedy, isn't it?

Sidey: too much integrity to, to sell anyone out because a lot of the times he's not to blame, but he, he won't do it.

Yeah. So he doesn't do it. But there's shit all over the law and where they're gonna get married and Owen Wilson turns up to deliver the. Yep. And he drives all over the shit and they're all, it's uncanny, but they're all stood right behind his truck and he has to reverse it and he doesn't get it.

And he fucking hammers the, you know, accelerator down and just sprays shit all over them. Cause shit on people who's funny. So there's all that going on. Mr. Jinx is a house cat. He's not allowed out, but he has got out. Yeah. And so Greg has to go and find him and he's got onto the roof and

Reegs: So he kicks down some electrical wire

Sidey: Greg likes to have a cigarette, but he, he, he doesn't wanna let onto anyone that he smokes. So he's

Reegs: goes to a final destination now, doesn't

Sidey: he does. He has a slice, Ziggy, which he flicks the butt, which goes into the gutter, which starts the fire. Yeah. And when he grabs Mr. Jinx, he knocks the electrical, like power mains, like fucking cable off the roof.

Reegs: And he's electrified to death,

Sidey: which sets fire to the.

Reegs: Copper.

Sidey: Yeah. And that burns down. And so he's,

Pete: it's all hideous. Slapstick bollocks now.

No,

Sidey: it's brilliant. Brilliant comedy. It's comedy.

No, it's great. It's an It's, it's unbelievable. And Mr. Jinx is gone. He's gone missing. So Greg.

in a way to ingratiate himself back into the fold because he, it, it becomes clear that he has caused all of this fucking shit. So I think he has to admit to starting the fire, which burnt down the

Reegs: hipper.

Sidey: Yeah. And all the other stuff like going Dennis.

Dan: Dennis Hooper.

Reegs: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah.

Sidey: All

that stuff. So he goes off and finds a cat in a shelter.

Yeah. Which,

Cris: which

is feral. It's a feral

Sidey: Yeah, it's a Himalayan looks like a main coon, but it's a Himalayan cat

Pete: A beautiful cat's

Sidey: very difficult to train. It's almost identical but not quite. Cuz it has a white tipped its tail, which is spray,

Reegs: flush the toilet.

Sidey: Yeah. And returns triumphantly back to the family.

And this like forgives all the fucking crazy shit that he's done. Yeah. By rescuing Mr. Jinx allegedly. And they go out for a meal and he.

Reegs: He's the hero.

Sidey: told Jack that he needs to have this conversation which is about asking for his daughter's hand. And and Jack gives him the spiel about you're now in the circle of trust.

The, the, the fuck their names, the thing he, the Burns family circle of

Reegs: Trust. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sidey: Obviously Mr. Burns grandson or something like that. And just because he found this cat, but he goes Greg goes off to make a call and he's just phoning around other places like, I need this, find this fucking cat.

So his plan is to somehow then switch out Mr. Jinx when he finds it brilliant. Teeing up some great comedy and d at the same time, DeNiro gets a call, he goes to answer the phone stood next to Ben. Brilliant. And He has a message from his next door neighbor saying that your cats come into our house.

Don't worry, I've got him here. You know, when you get back I'll drop him off.

Reegs: So yeah. Perfect

Sidey: Dan is wise, you know, this is like Goodfellas shit here. And so it's a race to get, get back home and it's just from one traffic light to the next, which. Definitely isn't overdone in any way. So they just have this like drawn out thing.

Reegs: starting between the traffic lights, don't it?

Yeah, I remember That's was funny.

Sidey: Till, till they get back. And it's just the, the other cat has gone completely feral. It's fucking like shred shredded the wedding dress and total the gaff and smashed all the plates. Like cats do all that. My cats do all the time.

So that's a bit of a nightmare. And Greg is basically told to fuck off. And that, I think they threw the MCATs thing at him there to say, you never fucking even did that. I've, I've checked up on you. And so he's sent off, but the mother is a bit like, well, actually, Jack, you're a bit of a cunt because you didn't like Owen Wilson's character until he'd split up with your

Reegs: Mm-hmm. And you're forcing these two

Sidey: and actually, you know, maybe it's you who's the fucking prick.

I

don't know. Maybe there's some truth to that.

Yeah, So Greg has to go back. He's gonna get on a flight. And he has some like proper rage, air raid, trying to get his ca because they were the carry on thing, you know, that happened before, earlier. Do you remember all the laughs? He trying to get his suitcase into the overhead locker, but

Reegs: It's too big. Yeah,

Sidey: it's way too big. It's bigger than that. It's large

Dan: always makes me laugh on a plane when I see

Sidey: the,

the steward the steward them. Says that you're gonna have to check that bag. And he goes on a rant and uses the bomb. Word

Reegs: He says bomb. Yeah.

Sidey: Which they had to cut the scene from the air.

airplane

version of the movie. Cuz you can't be saying bomb, bomb, bomb triggering. Yeah, you can't be saying bomb on, which is the bit of the

Pete: why didn't they cut the whole film out?

Cris: No, no. That was, I,

Sidey: so many comedy gold moments, Pete, that you would be that would be a crime against laughter.

Pete: I'd say I'd take the bomb,

Sidey: the laughter bomb.

So anyway, Jack has to Jack realizes the, of his ways that he's possibly been a bit too harsh and that actually what he's doing is just completely like cock blocking his daughter from getting some good dick. And so he needs to go and make amends and go and see Greg and what he does, because what it, what we learn is that Jack is not a florist.

He works for the cia. Yeah. He is a profiler and a criminal fucking, like psychological mastermind. So what he does is he gets Greg and he makes him put his arms down and he does the human lie detector test. Have you ever watched porn? He says, holy shit, I glad he didn't ask me that. And some other stuff about, do you love her?

Have you ever smoked weed? Yes, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then Jack flip reverses it on him and says, are you gonna not be a fucking dick? Like forever? He's like, well, I'll try blah, blah, blah. And they go back and it's all fucking happy days after that. Really? Yeah. So much so that we get two more films.

Reegs: Yeah, I was gonna say we've got hang on, I've got 'em here. We got meet the, you got meets

Sidey: Meet the Fucks,

Reegs: little fos and motherfuckers. Funny

Sidey: Do you? No, I just, it's

Pete: cuz it sounds like fuckers,

Sidey: Well, the second one you get. Dustin Hoffman

Cris: the hippies. That's the second one. The hippies. No, that's brilliant.

The for Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: aps.

Reegs: Imagine naming your kid Gaylord.

Sidey: Yes, because that's what it turns out, that actually when he, when his real luggage does arrive, his name is Gaylord fucker.

and

the producers wouldn't let them use the surname Foer unless they could prove that there were actually people out there called

Reegs: Gaylord's. The harder bit

Sidey: real. Yeah. It's lots

Pete: a real

Dan: old

Sidey: Yeah, it's big. It's big. It's bigger than

Cris: boy.

Reegs: you ever met any gaylords.

Cris: He's a Lord.

Pete: must

Cris: be a Lord somewhere. No,

Dan: And there used to be a few at my school. I remember everyone got called it.

Sidey: Yeah, I remember there was a cartoon that had a character in it called Gaylord.

Reegs: I imagine at school everyone was called like Edgar and Cyril and that sort of thing.

Cause they're all old timey names. Percy. Percy.

Dan: Yeah. Well that's

Sidey: like that. Yeah.

Dan: back, going back in a day. But no, there was it was like in old books you would read those characters 18 hundreds kind of thing, but.

Sidey: Yeah. So this was, I mean, it was a smash here.

It

Reegs: think it's all right. This is sort of like a six, six and a half out of, it's like I quite like

Pete: out of a thousand. Yeah,

Cris: no,

Reegs: like the. The the physical comedy band still is good in it. I like the way they do the whole, like social and ethic ethnic differences between him and the rest of the family and how they sometimes come. The, the sequels. I wouldn't watch any of them and I assume they're really

Sidey: twos are right, twos

Dan: When you were talking

Sidey: Like Pete. Right.

Cris: actually quite funny. I have to say

Dan: when

Sidey: trolling. This is fine. I mean, this is absolutely fine.

Reegs: This is pretty, you put it on, you laugh.

Sidey: I, I went and I saw Chris earlier on, I was saying, you know, there's probably like 15 films where Bens is like the same character and this is kind of one of them.

Yeah. But it's fine. It is, it's good

Pete: So, so on, on that point there, there are other like, you know, something about Mary and stuff like that he plays, you know, Even in that

Sidey: this isn't obviously as good as something about

Pete: right? But even, even in that, there's like scenes where there's something and you can tell that something's gonna go wrong.

It's like the, the moment that he doesn't want to go wrong. And it does, but then there's, there's other types of comedy. There's other, you know, it, it, it's not just a 90 minute or whatever, this is like barrage of fucking, like hideously set up

Sidey: it is totally contrived and.

Pete: Like, but like the worst example of it I've ever seen.

And, and the, it just sully's fucking big Bobby de Niro's.

Sidey: No, he's good in this. Playing against type is good. This is probably his best role

Reegs: goes, he goes a lot lower than this, Peter.

Pete: Right. And I've, and I Right, but I've not seen that. And I'm, I'm sure he does. And I've heard,

Reegs: or whatever. Some of that shit, shit. I've not seen,

Pete: I've not seen those films,

Dan: not bad. I've watched him in the intern and he was quite good in that.

Did you

Sidey: that? That's Aaron Wilson again, isn't it?

Oh no,

Reegs: no. It's Vince

Sidey: Aubrey Plaza, isn't

Dan: he? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reegs: Owen Wilson's often mistaken for Aubrey

Dan: when you were

Sidey: about there is an intern film with, with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as interns at Google, isn't there? Yeah.

Dan: yeah. When you were talking about this, I, I remembered I had seen it, but I kind of suppressed the, because I'm in the Pete's

Sidey: it was, it was so funny.

Dan: so funny. I, I remem, I remember just thinking, wow, this is shocking. And maybe it's because I, you know, DeNiro is one. One of the all time great actors for me,

Sidey: Great comedic actors

Dan: growing up. But no, I, I never really got him as a, a comedian. I think this was one of the first times that I'd seen him try and take that on in, in a film that I'd seen.

Pete: No, he can. I've seen him in like comic roles and like in

Dan: I have since, and I, I've enjoyed him in, in it, but this whole film

Sidey: is

Dan: and exactly that The Ashes thing says it all, and that

Sidey: Oh, day five tomorrow. We'll see how we get on.

Cris: 25

Dan: is gonna knock it over, you know, everything's gonna happen. And it, I don't really enjoy those unless they're amazingly funny at delivering it.

And I didn't,

Sidey: which it was. I,

Pete: I

I go as far as to say, like, on this podcast, the, the, the worst film that I've, or the film that I feel I've just been like, I've been subjected to, or it that I've enjoyed the least was Patterson, because that's a solid zero out of

Dan: more than

Pete: fucking nothing

Dan: happened. Cats.

Pete: And this is a minus score out of 10. It's even worse

Oh, that was bollocks. Yeah. Yeah. No, that was really bad. This, this is up there with slamming salmon for me. It's fucking

Sidey: Totally wrong. You are wrong because it was 55 million to make and

Pete: Yeah, but like the, the slammed it, the fucking idiots who went to watch it.

Like, if, if people like this film, I don't want to talk to them about films.

Cris: Well, we're talk, you're talking to,

Reegs: though. Yeah.

Pete: Well I'm telling you that now

Sidey: Okay. The end. Well, it's a bit late, but it smashed it. And we all know cuz remember, cast your mind back to when we talked about Ryan's world and Dan defended it because it made money.

This made 330 plus at the box office, so smash it. Two sequels.

Pete: a lot of

Sidey: bigger than that. It's fucking large. It's great. It's really, really good.

Reegs: Yeah. It's

Pete: not, you don't like it as much as you're pretending to like it.

Sidey: I do. I really enjoyed it. I watched a Saturday night on my, on my Todd at home.

Pete: you Lolling?

Sidey: time. Yeah, massively.

Pete: you ruffle at any point?

Sidey: I did. What? What I want to tell you, which will shock and discredit you is that Chris has never seen Dodgeball.

Pete: Whoa.

Reegs: Oh,

Pete: Really? I've never seen it.

Now that is a great Ben Stiller film or film with Ben Stiller in Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So many, so many, so many, so many better films out there with Bens and with Robert De Niro and with the co actual comedy films that make people laugh.

This is fucking minus scores out of 10, out of any number. It is awful.

Sidey: give this terrible six, I think Reese bang on

Pete: six.

out of a billion. Yeah.

Cris: Yeah. Six and a half outta 10.

Dan: i

Sidey: outta five.

Pete: It's

Dan: I I remember it being sub five.

Reegs: It's a strong

Sidey: Yes. Strong

Cris: Yeah. I, I highly recommend that.