Down & dirty
Gross-out humor hurts ‘Meet the Parents’ wannabe
AMING a character Gaylord Focker never struck me as comic genius, but I can (if I squint) see the appeal of at least the first of the three “Meet the Parents” movies. “Why Him?” — a shameless retread — has more of a panicky quality, a fear that you’ll lose interest if more than five minutes go by without a dirty joke.
This one is a remix of Focker elements from writer-director John Hamburg, who co-wrote the earlier movies. This time, the wealthy Owen Wilson character from those movies is the current love interest (instead of the ex-boyfriend) of the daughter, and he lives in absurd Silicon Valley opulence. He’s Laird (James Franco), a foul-mouthed but relentlessly upbeat manchild with a habit of relating details of his sex life with his girlfriend, a Stanford University student named Stephanie (Zoey Deutch), in front of her straight-laced Midwestern parents (Bryan Cranston and Megan Mullally).
The parents and their teen son (Griffin Gluck) are spending Christmas vacation with Laird and Stephanie in California. There, they learn to their surprise that the couple have been living together, and Laird is planning to ask Stephanie to marry him and drop out of school to run his charitable foundation.
There is a passable 85-minute comedy in here, caked in an additional 30 minutes of flab. Call it a dadbod comedy.
Franco’s goofy friendliness at least keeps the movie watchable, and Mullally has some funny moments.
Like many other comedy writers these days, though, Hamburg is a gross-out specialist, and his efforts to give the movie some layers are halfhearted. Stephanie’s claim that she loves Laird because he reminds her of her dad could form the basis of some astute comedy, but Hamburg doesn’t pursue it. A fresh, and politically timely, subtext of tension between frustrated Rust Belt America and oblivious, money-drenched Silicon Valley also doesn’t go far, and a let’s-meet-halfway ending may be seasonally appropriate, but its details make no sense.
Whatever, it’s the spirit that counts: As Laird might say, “Happy motherf - - king holidays, amigo!”