Meet The Parents starts off as a simple romantic comedy. Gaylord "Greg" Focker (Ben Stiller) is dating Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo), and he wants to propose. However, as he's in the middle of his proposal, Teri gets a call informing her that her sister is getting married, and the sister's husband-to-be had the foresight to ask Pam's father for approval before popping the question. Realizing that he can't do any less, Greg is determined to get the dad's approval before asking Pam to marry him. However, things start to go wrong from the beginning and it doesn't help that the father, Jack (Robert De Niro), seems far more intimidating than Greg ever expected. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Meet The Parents is a good idea for a movie. The tension anyone has felt when they meet the parents of someone they really care about can be nerve wracking. The smallest faux pas can get blown way out of proportion. And the first part of the film does a good job of channeling that. Greg's fear is palpable, and it's clear that Jack is playing off of that to make him even more nervous. The problem is the movie simply takes it all too far.

In fact, I can point to the exact moment where the film dives straight off the deep end. The whole family, including Pam's engaged sister, are playing water polo in a pool, and Greg isn't doing well, to Jack's chagrin. Jack tells Greg to spike the ball as hard as he can. Greg does so, knocking the ball straight into Pam's sister's face. Blood pours into the water around her, and you think, "Oh, he gave her a bloody nose. What a klutz!" At that moment, she screams, "My eye!" and you realize that the blood streaming from her face is coming from her eyeball. That's not funny, that's masochistic. And from there, it just gets worse. The small fumbles suddenly become major catastrophes that would never happen in real life.

It probably sounds weird that I'm criticizing a Ben Stiller movie for not being "real" enough, but the movie does such a good job of making the audience feel Greg's pain that when we get into the more outrageous gags, you feel just as bad as Greg does, and that's not funny. This kind of comedy requires that you have a certain amount of detachment, because you have to be able to laugh at the characters, since they can't laugh at themselves. But when the empathy runs so high that you could see yourself in their place, then it's no longer funny. It's just painful.

Not everything in the film is disastrous. As I mentioned, the early portion of the film does quite a good job of playing off the little things that slowly add up. Heck, even when Greg accidentally destroys the urn containing Jack's mother's ashes, it's still funny. And De Niro is consistently fantastic all the way throughout the film. De Niro is known for playing some of the most dangerous men in the history of film, so it's a real pleasure to watch him play someone who's more down to earth, who's worried about the simple pleasures of homemaking. It's an entirely different side of De Niro and he pulls it off wonderfully.

Ben Stiller, on the other hand, feels creatively shackled in his role. His part is so put upon that all he can really do is play the part of someone who is being unfairly put upon. He's not proactive in any way, doesn't take any initiative, he just sits there and takes it. In fact, I personally think Meet The Parents is responsible for the neutering of Ben Stiller as a comedian. Other than Zoolander, which was in production before Meet The Parents even came out, and Dodgeball, where he does nothing but reprise a character from Heavyweights, Stiller's roles in his films since Meet The Parents have been severely bland. Look at what he's done since: Duplex, Envy, Starsky And Hutch, and, of course, Meet The Fockers. I think that when Meet The Parents became a surprise hit, Stiller felt that America only wanted to see him in "safe" roles, which is why he hasn't done anything remotely interesting since.

The HD DVD:

The Image:
Universal presents Meet The Parents in a 1.85:1 1080p VC1 transfer. For some reason, the colors all seem very muted throughout the picture, with the exceptions of flesh tones, which are overly pink and sometimes even red. Detail is very high. You can see very pore on Ben Stiller's face. I just cannot understand why the color reproduction is so off. I don't remember it looking that way in the theater.

The Audio:
Being a comedy, Meet The Parents doesn't have a splashy soundtrack. But I found that the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 track provided here to be quite engaging. While the majority of the action takes place in the front, quite often smaller background sounds are tossed to the rears. And, of course, when things do heat up (such as when Greg burns down the wedding altar), the mix comes alive. It's got good separation and is pleasing to the ear, overall.

The Supplements:
This edition of Meet The Parents actually has the special features from two DVD editions, which is quite useful, as the individual DVD editions both excluded extras included on the other edition.

Feature commentary with director Jay Roach and editor Jon Poll: Jay Roach and Jon Poll give a lot of insight into the shooting of the film. While they don't give anything beyond the basic shooting anecdote and/or behind the scenes factoids, they're still both very enjoyable. However, this is not the best commentary on the disc.

Feature commentary with Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Jay Roach, and producer Jane Rosenthal: Let's face it, any commentary with Robert De Niro is worth hearing. I don't care what film it's for. It's De Niro, who is notorious for not doing interviews, doing a commentary. That alone makes this a must-hear.

Spotlight On Location: A 25-minute look at the making of the movie. Features interviews with just about every member of the cast and crew. The best part are Ben Stiller's ad libs in his interviews. The rest is pretty much fluff.

Outtakes: A very large collection of outtakes, almost all of which are funnier than the film itself. It's great to see De Niro joking around and cracking up.

Deleted Scenes: Two deleted scenes are included here. The first is funny. The second is not. Both include commentaries by Jay Roach and Jon Poll.

De Niro Unplugged: A short scene of De Niro singing at the wedding reception. Not nearly as funny as it's made out to be.

The Truth About Lying: An interview with an actual lie detector operator, who explains how the device works, what happens to a person when they lie, and the overall effectiveness of a lie detector test. He also talks about a few of the scenes in the movie and how close they are to reality.

Silly Cat Tricks: An interview with the animal trainer who trained the cats that played Mr. Jinx in the film. I enjoyed it just for the cats.

Jay Roach: A Director's Profile Perhaps the dumbest, most useless, absolutely pointless extra I've ever seen anywhere, this "director's profile" is nothing but a badly edited montage of director Jay Roach, set to a hideous techno song with short audio clips from the film played on top. Mercifully, the whole thing only lasts about a minute. I cannot fathom who thought this was a good idea. Truly pathetic.

Take The Lie Detector Test: Speaking of useless extras, the disc offers its own version of a lie detector test. You get a series of questions presented to you, to which you can answer yes or no. At the end it says whether you passed or failed. Considering no criteria is laid out at the beginning, it seems rather pointless.

The Forecaster Game: Just as useless is this little game, which presents you with a series of situations regarding meeting your significant other's parents, and four absurd possible ways out of said situation. At the end, it tells you whether or not you're okay with the parents.

Rounding things out are the theatrical trailer and DVD credits. None of the supplements are in high definition.

The Conclusion:
Meet The Parents is a mean-spirited film that quickly loses the laughs it tries to go for. It's highly overrated and unfunny. It's mostly just painful to watch. The picture on this HD DVD seems to have faulty color reproduction, but good detail. The sound is fine, and the extras are actually pretty plentiful. It's just that the movie itself is so bad that the only thing I can recommend is that you Skip It.

Daniel Hirshleifer is the High Definition Editor for DVD Talk.