Z/Web

Director: Jay Roach

Excellent movie! Just the perfect mix of realism and exaggeration. The plot’s simple: Ben Stiller plays a young man ready to marry his girlfriend, only first he must meet her parents. The parents are cautiously welcoming, but everything goes hilariously wrong. What I liked was that no one goes out of their way to make Stiller feel uncomfortable; what happens is a matter of clumsiness, bad luck, and Stiller’s own push to appear the perfect son-in-law. Classic example: in a “friendly” water volleyball match, Stiller’s team is criticizing his repeated mistakes. Finally Stiller has had enough. He rears up and hammers home a terrific spike — and gives his girlfriend’s sister a facial, on the eve of her wedding. Suddenly everyone’s acting like Stiller’s a serial killer. You feel tremendous sympathy for poor Stiller — no one does the hapless-but-likable victim better. Hilarious, well-acted, well-written. A bit silly in places, but doesn’t really hurt the film overall.

According to Chelsea, they are “guaranteed six points every season as long as Tottenham’s in the same league.” Apparently, Tottenham has a long history of losing to Chelsea, and this day proved no different. Tottenham started things off with some decent offense, forcing Chelsea keeper De Hoy to make some key saves. But then a hand ball in the box gave Chelsea a penalty kick, and Hasselbaink put it away cleanly. Near the end of the half, Chelsea added another. Dennis Wise got free on the left and put in a nice cross which Hasselbaink headed to Zola, who headed it into the net. The game after that was routine. Chelsea gave up nothing and Tottenham did nothing but run around the field aimlessly. At the very end, Hasselbaink got another goal with a low-driven long-range curver. Final 3-0, Chelsea. Poor Tottenham.