When I was a kid, I vaguely remembered Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara from various sitcoms or television projects they would guest appear on. I was too young to watch Stiller and Meara, their sketch comedy act in the 1960s. They were a very popular comedy duo, though because they were married and being married to each other was part of their shtick. In later years, I would catch some of their shows in reruns.Their appearances on the very popular Ed Sullivan Show were legendary. This put them on the map, but this was just the beginning of their great careers. They went on for years afterward, having a lot of success in television and on the stage.

Stiller and Meara, as they were known in their showbiz lives, put their lives out in the open for everyone to see. They made a lot of appearances on various talk shows honing their act. Their husband and wife act resonated with a lot of viewers who watched them, whether on a stand-up stage or any of their many shows and movies they also appeared in the 70s and 80s.They even brought their kids Benji aka Ben and Amy Stiller along with them on many of these occasions. They became a comedy family. All of the various shows and routines the kids saw helped them develop into showmen of their own. This was just the beginning of Ben Stiller’s entertainment work.

He is, in fact, the director of this very documentary, but he has also been a successful actor, producer, and writer as well. He learned a lot of these things being a witness to his mother and fathers careers.He was able to interview his parents, friends, and his own children, Ella, Quin, and his wife Christine. As talking heads go, the film is rather thin. It’s mainly Stiller talking about his parents with his sister and kids. He got them all to reminisce on his parents, their grandparents, and how relevant their lives fit together. Stiller talked about the difficulties his parents had at keep their family together despite so much going on in their lives. This resonated with him because he had a similar experience with his wife and children.

As many documentaries do, this one has three things that cross over with quite a few others I’ve seen in the past. The first is archival footage. This film uses quite a bit of archival footage from the Ed Sullivan Show and many other talk show appearances. Also, there is plenty from the movies and television shows they appeared on in their careers. As celebrities, they had access to cameras and equipment to record and edit video recordings they made themselves of their family. All of these recordings were saved and perceived by Jerry Stiller himself. Ben just touched on some of the recordings he listened to. 

The second thing the film uses a lot of is photos of the family from as far back as the 60s. Many photos showed the careers of these two very funny people and their kids. A lot of the photos showed these people aging from very young to the times of their deaths decades later. Ben used as many things as he could to get the gist of his parents’ lives in this documentary. The main thing this documentary used was a framing device focusing on Ben and Amy going through their parents’ old apartment. They had to organize all of the things his parents kept over the years. This is probably one of the most extensive and rare collections of memorabilia I could have imagined.  

Ben Stiller brought the documentary full circle as he touched on his mothers alcoholism and his own domestic problems. He realized that he was going through similar things in his life with working too hard to give his own kids a good life. This was exactly what his own mother and father did. They were copying each other’s lives without realizing it. He started to figure this out when his family and him came back together during the Covid-19 pandemic. And when he started making the film I’m reviewing right now. What an incredible revelation came to be in one of the most difficult times in the country’s history and a very sad time in his own life. He made a terrific film in the end, though.

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen