Navigate to Arts & Letters section

No. 16: Meet the Parents

Intermarriage license

by
Alana Newhouse
December 08, 2011

2000, dir. Jay Roach. Look, it’s not Fellini, but this comedy just might be one of the most Jewishly relevant of our time. Starring Ben Stiller as the tragically named nebbish Gaylord Focker intent on proposing to his pretty, sweet blonde girlfriend in front of her family—including her imposing father, played memorably by Robert DeNiro—the film became an instant entry in the canon of intermarriage art. And if its message was too subtle (it wasn’t), the unfortunate follow-up certainly did the trick.

Alana Newhouse is the editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine.