Much like comedians such as Adam Sandler, Christ Farley, and even Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller has one of those film personalities that seems to stay the same in various roles or in different situations. You can almost be sure ahead of time he’s going to play a character who’s smart and good-hearted, but who’s frequently anxious and short-tempered.

Like the other comedians, it’s always fun to watch this character dealing with the adversity he encounters. In this case, Stiller confronts the family of his would be fiancé, Pam (Teri Polo). The challenge comes in gaining the approval of her father, Jack (Robert DeNiro), an ex-CIA employee who’s protective of his daughter.

Stiller, playing a character named Greg Folker, screws up in as many ways as possible and ends up lying to cover his tracks. In fact, most of the jokes center around some sort of lie of Greg’s or other thing he says or does to try to maintain Jack’s approval. Though the situations sometimes go off into extremes, there’s genuine humor in his sincere, but pitiful, attempts to gain acceptance in the family.

Owen Wilson plays Pam’s former fiancé, Keven; and though his role is a small one, Wilson still seems to eclipse Stiller in humor whenever he’s on the screen. I don’t think Wilson got a single line across that didn’t make me laugh.

Robert DeNiro is also funnier than I remember him being anywhere else and I appreciate his character’s final change of heart. I would have liked to see more build up or motivation behind to it – it was kind of a sudden 180. It was as much as we can expect, though, for this kind of comedy and worked well enough.

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