STILLER & MEARA: NOTHING IS LOST - Mark Reviews Movies

Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, Apple Original Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 16, 2025

Without wanting to question the very foundation of a well-meaning and heartfelt documentary, it is strange that Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost exists in the form that it is and with the perspective it possesses. This is, in part, a tribute to the careers and marriage of director Ben Stiller's parents: Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, who formed a successful comedy duo who were quite popular during the heyday of the television variety show.

The documentary goes over the highlights of their act, although Stiller's own closeness to the subject means that he might assume everyone is as familiar with the material as he is. Even though there is plenty of archival video of the pair's TV appearances, the movie itself cuts many of the routines short, before the bits get to the punch line or even the setup.

It's not necessarily issue with the documentary. After all, the elder Stiller and Meara's professional lives aren't the exclusive or even the primary focus of the narrative the director has put together. That has to do with his parents' relationship, which often looked as if the line between their personal feelings for each other and the personas they put forth for entertainment blurred. Many of their routines were about people bickering, and when the two were sitting together for interviews as themselves, there was a lot of that going on, too. Was it just a continuation of the act, or did it reveal something deeper?

Stiller, the son and filmmaker, and his older sister Amy had a harder time trying to figure out the distinction—or if there even was one in the first place. One doesn't have to imagine some kind of scenario showing how this could affect these two as kids, because their father had a habit of archiving everything. In addition to hoarding various news clippings and memorabilia and anything else he can get his hands on, the older Stiller also kept an extensive collection of audio and video recordings.

After Meara's death in 2015 and his death in 2020, the couple's children came to the apartment where they grew up, which their parents owned for most of their lives as a couple, to clean house and prepare the place to be put up for sale. They found all of those cassette tapes and reels of film, and in one of them, Meara and Stiller can be heard improvising a routine. In character, Meara starts crying, and her daughter enters the room, trying to get her mother to stop crying and then asking if she's "only kidding." Meara tells her she is "only kidding," but that first part is more telling. How is a child to know for sure, especially when the line is even blurrier in private?

This is a fascinating idea to explore, and it is clearly personal for Stiller, who often films himself going through his parents' things—mostly his father's—and talking to relative or friends about his parents and speaking directly to the camera as he works out his memories, as well as what he has learned from this experience. The big thing for the director and his sister to reconcile is that, in addition to never really knowing what the nature of their parents' marriage quite was, their parents were regularly absent while they were growing up. Even when they were home during that period, the couple was still working, technically, since the elder Stiller also had a habit of seeing everything as fodder for the pair's next routine.

In reality, the movie is about that, and it is also about how Stiller, the son, inherited a lot of that work ethic, a drive for perfection, and a need to be liked from his father. The documentary, which is also Stiller trying to determine how much his own professional life has affected his own familial relationships, almost comes across as a misguided act of therapy.

There are more members of the Stiller family here, basically. They include the director's wife Christine Taylor and the couple's two children, who are seemingly teenagers while sitting down to talk with their father about him. Stiller admits he didn't want to be the kind of parent he remembers his own parents being while he was a kid, but by the time he did become a father, his career was established and still going. Yes, Stiller made time for his children, but they still explain that it often felt as if he was absent, even when he was with them. His mind was always on work, even if Stiller didn't know it.

The question no one puts forth to the filmmaker, of course, is whether or not this is the appropriate circumstance for these conversations to be happening. What was the issue, again? It was that Stiller was always thinking about the movie he was making or the one he wanted to make next. How is he discussing this with his wife and children? It's in front of cameras, as he's busy working on a movie that is ostensibly about his parents but that becomes more about him.

The professional-personal line isn't just blurred here. It's non-existent. Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost is introspective and honest enough to be fascinating, but the movie definitely isn't aware enough to understand the implications and questionable efficacy of its own existence.

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