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| Do not watch this film |
Title: Meet the Family
Synopsis: A Shy, Obese loner brings home his girlfriend to meet his parents unaware that they are meeting his entire family.
Year: 2005
Time Length: 90 minutes
Rating: R
Budget: $300,000
Production Company: Lerner Entertainment Group
This production info provided by IMDB
Hello J360 Legion!
This movie deals with an obese and shy scientist named Humphrey Rump and his family.
We’re introduced to Humphrey’s Family coming together to meet him and his new girlfriend/lab assistant named Lacy.
The Family stand within the living room where we meet the usual stock characters in an urban comedy: The generic friendly parents, the sassy sister, the scheming brother, the horny grandma, the senile grandpa, and plenty of extras.
If that didn’t sound horrible (I know it did), it gets worse. The acting and interaction of each character is about as fake as the people portraying them.
We’re led from the living room with the parents talking about Humphrey: his background, being a scientist, shyness and etc. His sister would talk about in him in praise while his brother would talk about him in mocking for example: Humphrey’s weight.
We don’t meet Humphrey himself until about 30 minutes into the movie.
The family sits down at the table in the dining room and continue talking more but this time you’d realize each character’s “purpose.” The brother and sister would say some of the most pointless banter to which if most parents heard one word of it would kindly tell you to shut up. The Parents here however would smile and encourage it while keeping a false friendly demeanor with each other.
The worst doesn’t come from them but from the grandparents.
Usually in comedies, you’d love to see the senior citizens characters come in because hilarious statements tend to come out of their mouths through different circumstances.
Not in this case, the grandfather is a senile old man who is often misunderstanding the world around him, has to say something at the end of every frame, and it’s usually bland or out of context.
The grandmother on the other hand is a mega-bitch, she pretty much kills this movie (If it’s not dead already). Everything that comes out of her mouth is a sex joke, she has an active sex life, cheated on grandpa, and slept with one of the guests at the the dinner.
After much talking from the family we’re finally introduced to Humphrey himself. If you ever get the displeasure of watching this movie, and he looks familiar then you’ve figured it out, the whole movie is a rip-off from the dinner scenes of The Nutty Professor (1996).
Humphrey walks in with his lovely assistant/girlfriend Lacy, who to the surprise of the family is a thin, blonde, caucasian woman. The family only commented on this twice which is good because some movies would take this subject into overkill (remember National Security?).
The young woman isn’t harassed but constant passes are made to her by Humphrey’s scheming brother whom Humphrey doesn’t say anything to and the parents are still smiling awkwardly at everything.
Humphrey’s girlfriend doesn’t push the movie along any better, as a matter a fact she shows herself as being a complete ditz and very in line with the stereotypes of every character in this movie. It’s unnerving to see and makes you wonder what compelled the actress in following through with such a character?
I can only hope this portrayal didn’t damage her self-esteem or career because there seemed to have been some talent in her.
Do note once you’ve read this line, it’s been 40 minutes into the movie…Guess what happens next?
They’re all still sitting at the table and Grandpa says possibly the one funny line in this movie.
“When are we going to get some damn food here?”
Yes they’ve sat there the entire time with no food on the table, and since I don’t have any patience to repeat this anymore. I’ll sum up the movie in a list.
- Family sits at the table, no changes in scenery other than angles
- Pervert joke
- Pervert joke
- Grandpa’s Senility
- Grandma’s unnecessary perverted joke
- Humphrey declares/sings his love to Lacy (attempt at romance)
- Grandpa finally stands up to grandma
- Family still just sits at the table
While there’s no point in explaining any further with the movie, it really shows how far you can get away with $300,000 dollars and not use one damn cent in the production. There’s a subplot dealing with a growth formula but with the monotone of the family sitting there at the table, and 90 minutes of my life wasted I guess we tend to ignore that happy crap.
Course, we can excuse it because it was made during the dark years of filming: 2005…Yes the time when we started to make tv series into movies and deal with lackluster remakes but no…forget it…this is inexcusable.