Jay Roach and the Meet The Parents gang promised a topping great screenplay for the next edition, the franchise’s 4th, which recently cast Ariana Grande along with original cast and announced John Hamburg is directing.
“The script is really good,” said De Niro after a screening of the hit comedy where he famously flexed his comedy cops as Jack Byrnes, human lie detector and CIA dad hazing his daughter’s finance – played by Teri Polo and Ben Stiller. “I’m looking forward to it,” he said.
The audience sure did, yucking it up during a 25th anniversary screening and reunion Q&A at the Tribeca Festival Saturday.
Asked to spill a little about the upcoming film, Stiller said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what we can say. We can I probably tell you the whole plot?” He did’t.
Roach who directed the original and will produce, said, “You know, it’s always about the predicament. I fell in love with that script, the first film script … because imagining what it’s like when you care so much about winning the approval of someone, and you’re right away going to start screwing it up, and the harder you try the worse you’re going to make it. And I think that’s what John has come up with again, and that’s what always you need. That predicament is everything in a story. And I think in this one, John found a really great new predicament. I think everybody’s going to love squirming through it, just like this.”
Stiller said the timing felt right. “I think what spurred the idea was that at this point in time. I’m the age that Bob was when we did the first movie. Teri is the same age she was when we did it, and there was this sort of sort mirror to the first film in terms of my kids are grown. And my kid, one of my kids, is thinking about introducing his person to the family.
“I think life informs everything that’s happened in the last, you know, 25 years, and it’s been a while since we did the last one. I think what like 15 years ago? So it’s kind of like great to look at it as a sort of like a new thing. But of course, there’s all these great memories and I feel like our connections are still there. When we get back together, it’s just like, it’s kind of like, all baked in there.”
“The audience has this history with the characters and they’re going to bring that to the film too,” said Roach. “So there’s something that’s kind of emotional about it, I think, for for me, for the actors, to the connection that people have with the movie.”
De Niro said he’s been gunning for another film for years. “Actually, when we filmed the last one, I was with Ben and John Hamburg, and we sat in my camper, and I said, ‘Let’s start writing one now, to be ready for another one.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure.’ They were humoring me. They didn’t want to do it. whatever. And so now finally, though, it only took 15 years.”
None of them had watched the first film for years. It was revelatory, said Polo. “Ben, I, I’ve always known you’re so amazing, but I just, I literally, I’m gonna cry. I literally forgot how stinking funny you are. Genius. The way you deliver lines and where you look. Like, if you watch where he looks, you’re like, he’s like, brilliant. And Bob, I forgot how, just how straight you were.”
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