Stream It Or Skip It: âStiller and Meara: Nothing is Lostâ on Apple TV+, Ben Stiller’s Tribute to His Famous, Funny Parents

October 24, 2025

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The celebrity biodoc renaissance – celebiodocnaissance? – barrels ahead in earnest with Stiller and Meara: Nothing is Lost (now streaming on Apple TV+), an examination of comedy duo Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara directed by their son, who you may be familiar with: Ben Stiller. No surprise then, that the documentary is an intimate portrait of a showbiz family, a project Ben and his sister Amy Stiller tackled after their father passed away in 2020, preceded by their mother five years prior. It’s a prickly and revealing film that doesn’t shy away from some of the Stiller family’s truths and conflicts, and ends up being an unconventional portrait of creative people that’s not quite as indulgent or self-serving as other docs of its ilk.

The Gist: The setting is the New York City Upper West Side apartment that Jerry and Anne bought in the 1950s, and where they raised their children, Amy and “Benji.” The adult Ben and Amy are finally ready to sell the place, which requires staging it and therefore sorting through all their parents’ stuff. It’s a bittersweet scenario most people will go through, but most people don’t have parents who were TV talk/variety show staples and a popular nightclub act in the 1960s – or parents with shelves full of archival material. The home movies, scrapbooks, letters and photographs make sense. Less so Jerry’s trove of audiocassettes, which are full of not just comedy bits he and Anne were working on, but everyday interactions with his wife and kids. Some are conversations and others arguments, and if it’s not common to compile such things, the contents are actually quite pedestrian, the stuff of any family whose members live together and understand each other inside-out. Ben shows the camera a boxful of cassettes: “I can’t believe he taped everything,” Ben says. Is he overwhelmed, fascinated, embarrassed, delighted? Yes. All of it.

I’m not sure these tapes necessarily clarify anything regarding Jerry and Anne’s careers, together or apart, or their relationships with their children. We’ll hear significant portions of them throughout the documentary as Ben crafts a film that’s more of an exploration and musing than a biography. He hopes he’ll “somehow understand how they did it,” and by “it,” I believe he means maintaining a marriage for more than 60 years, with a significant portion consisting of a working business partnership. Jerry and Anne were trained for the stage, and after marrying in 1954, soon became the comedy duo Stiller and Meara. She always wanted to be a serious dramatic actor, but had a natural gift for comedy. He coerced and encouraged her to let her funny flag fly, and their chemistry was palpable. Jerry, a perfectionist, worked his tail off to get everything just right, and she was more easygoing, a gifted ad-libber. That friction was crucial in making the comedy work. Part of their shtick was, Jerry would be the straight man and Anne would constantly interrupt him with zingers. They were a hit. They ended up on The Ed Sullivan Show dozens of times and spun it into a touring act.

We see an amazing clip from The Mike Douglas Show where Stiller and Meara introduce the nation to their children, who border on precocious and are comfortable enough with the camera to perform “Chopsticks” on violins in a manner that makes biting tinfoil feel pleasant. Like I said, amazing. Comedy? Or unintentional comedy? Who can tell? Ben was like seven or eight, it seems. This is the “nepo baby” portion of the documentary, but it isn’t particularly telling: Ben surpassed his parents’ fame and fortune by miles, and would you recognize Amy on the street? The siblings have a conversation about that, on camera, specifically for this doc, and she shares the cruddy feelings she had while he shot into the stratosphere (need I mention Zoolander and There’s Something About Mary and Tropic Thunder and all his other acting and directing gigs? Probably not) and she was waiting tables. This is one of those slightly uncomfortable but admirably honest moments, one among many. Most compelling is Ben and Amy’s discussion of how their parents would shut themselves into a room in the apartment to work out comedy bits, and nobody could tell if they were really arguing or if it was simply part of the act. Jerry and Anne were Stiller and Meara and Stiller and Meara were Jerry and Anne, and sometimes it blurred together. But it always worked. They were restlessly creative, sometimes ambitious, often absent, occasionally drunk, frequently fighting and just as frequently finding a way to make the marriage work, but always in love.

Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost — Photo: Apple TV+

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Among the increasingly long list of celeb biodocs from the last few years (Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pamela Anderson, Soleil Moon-Frye, etc.), Nothing is Lost has more in common with those that directly address famous people’s relationships with their parents: Mariska Hargitay’s examination of her mother, Jayne Mansfield, in My Mom Jayne, and Robert Downey Jr.’s tribute to his father, Robert Downey Sr., in Sr.

Performance Worth Watching: Jerry’s Jewish heritage and Anne’s Irish heritage was a fact that became their most famous and funny bit, possibly because it blurred the people with their personae.

Memorable Dialogue: Meara, in an archival interview: “Where does the act end and the marriage begin?”

Sex and Skin: None, although there is a moment when Ben reads a love letter from his father to his mother out loud, and raises an eyebrow when he gets to the lusty part.

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Ben Stiller and Jerry Stiller — Photo: Getty Images

Our Take: Stiller and Meara doesn’t craft clean and sharp portraits of these people; it’s as messy and cluttered as the apartment we see in the film’s opening moments. That’s intentional, and a more truthful reflection of who Jerry and Anne were as human beings than any documentary working through their lifetimes of achievements bolstered by commentary from family, friends, colleagues and admirers. The film is a little bit slippery in the sense that it’s about a marriage, notably a functional one, and those types of things are mercurial, full of mysteries and complexities, and therefore difficult to pin down.

To reiterate: Ben isn’t even sure how they did it, and he was there for a lot of it. He ropes in his own family to participate in the doc, in an attempt to better understand, well, everyone, I think. He separated from his wife, Christine Taylor, for a couple years before they reconciled during the covid pandemic; she’s a little more guarded discussing the subject, but understands the parallels that Ben sees – they, too, worked together professionally, on multiple movies, and raised a son and daughter, and like Jerry, Ben was an absentee father while he was off working working working. His daughter Ella bluntly shares that there are portions of her life where she doesn’t recall him being a part of it, and we can’t help but stare at Ben as he sits quietly and absorbs this information. Ironically, it’s a feeling he can relate to, and we sense that it may bring them together.

Ben neatly weaves together past and present, integrating revealing biographical fodder into the current-day analysis. Jerry was the product of a harsh father, and Anne was raised by her single dad after her mother died by suicide; such was their pain. Does it neatly explain why Anne struggled with alcoholism – which isn’t discussed in much detail, leaving us with the impression it was a problem without being a tragedy – and Jerry’s neurotic perfectionism? Of course not. This is real life, not a movie narrative. Anne and Jerry would break up their comedy duo and pursue separate careers because they had different goals, leading to some professional struggles – bit parts, game show appearances, off-Broadway roles – although both celebrated Emmy-nominated roles, Anne’s most notably for All in the Family, Jerry’s quite famously for Seinfeld. Is it a funny irony that in 1976, each landed starring slots in TV series that were both nearly simultaneously canceled? Yeah, sort of.

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Two notable revelations: One, Ben’s directing Nothing is Lost is a clear reflection of his father, who taught Ben the art of filmmaking while shooting endless reams of home movies; the documentary is destined to be the most high-profile piece in the growing Stiller family archive. And two, again, the blurring between Jerry and Anne’s/Stiller and Meara’s professional and private lives, which reveals how the lives of creative people bleed into their art – they were catalysts for each other’s creative endeavors whether they worked together or apart. Of course Nothing is Lost is ultimately warm and positive, a tribute to Anne and Jerry’s love – consider the source – but it’s also not excessively indulgent, or afraid to wrestle with difficult, messy stuff. Not all celebrity profiles should be stories of fame won and lost.

Our Call: In fact, no celebrity profile should be about fame won and lost whatsoever. The surface-level content only goes so far, and Stiller and Meara: Nothing is Lost boldly goes deeper. STREAM IT.

Where To Watch Stiller and Meara: Nothing Is Lost

Apple TV+ comes with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers and has just one ad-free streaming plan available for $13.99/month.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

https://decider.com/2025/10/24/stiller-and-meara-nothing-is-lost-apple-tv-plus-documentary-review-stream-it-or-skip-it/

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MICHAELANTONIO

⭐️Singer/Songwriter/Voice Talent/Actor/Media Personality⭐️
Born in Syracuse, NY. He holds a bachelor of science degree in communication from Florida Institute of Technology with specialization in technical writing, business, public relations, marketing, media, promotion, and aerospace engineering.

⭐️ Las Vegas Entertainer ⭐️ MTV uplaya Platinum Auddy Award Winner ⭐️ Southeastern FTTF Talent Champion ⭐️ Movies & TV ⭐️ Listed in ‘Who’s Who’ publication ⭐️ Voted ‘MOST MARKETABLE’: Sonic Records ⭐️ U.S. Veteran ⭐️

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Where To Watch Stiller and Meara: Nothing Is Lost

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