Meet the Parents is a 2000 American romantic comedy film written by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg and directed by Jay Roach. It stars Ben Stiller as Greg Focker, a nurse who visits his girlfriend Pam's parents, overprotective Jack (Robert De Niro) and pacifistic Dina (Blythe Danner), and suffers from a series of unfortunate events. Teri Polo stars as Pam, and Owen Wilson stars as Pam's ex-boyfriend Kevin.

The film is a remake of the 1992 film Meet the Parents directed by and starring Greg Glienna, who also wrote the screenplay alongside Mary Ruth Clarke. Universal Pictures purchased the rights to Glienna's film with the intent of creating a new version. Herzfeld expanded the original script but development was halted for some time. Roach read the expanded script and expressed his desire to direct it. At that time, DreamWorks Pictures' Steven Spielberg was interested in directing while Jim Carrey was interested in playing the lead role. Universal offered the film to Roach only after Spielberg and Carrey left the project.

Released in the United States and Canada on October 6, 2000, and distributed by Universal and DreamWorks internationally, the film earned back its initial budget of $55 million in only 11 days. It became one of the highest-grossing films of 2000, earning more than $165 million in North America and more than $330 million worldwide. It was well received by film critics and viewers alike, winning several awards and earning additional nominations. Ben Stiller won two comedy awards for his performance, and the film was chosen as the Favorite Comedy Motion Picture at the 2001 People's Choice Awards. It was followed by the sequels Meet the Fockers (2004) and Little Fockers (2010). A fourth film in the franchise titled Focker-in-Law is in production and set for release in Thanksgiving 2026.

Plot

<!-- Per WP:FILMPLOT, plot summary should be between 400 to 700 words. -->

Greg Focker, a Jewish-American nurse living in Chicago, intends to propose to his girlfriend of ten months, second-grade teacher Pam Byrnes. He chooses to get her father's blessing at her sister Debbie's wedding at their parents' house on Long Island, and plans to propose to her in front of her family. This plan is put on hold when the airline loses his luggage, which contains the engagement ring after airport security refused to let him take it through the x-ray machine and making him check it in.

At the Byrneses' house, Greg meets Pam's father Jack, mother Dina, and beloved cat Mr. Jinx. Despite displaying a friendly demeanor toward Greg, Jack is immediately suspicious of him and is critical of his choice of career as a nurse. Greg gifts Jack an extremely rare flower, but Jack does not recognize it, although he claims to be a retired florist.

Greg becomes more uncomfortable after he receives an impromptu lie detector test from Jack. Pam explains that Jack's profession as a florist is a cover, and that he is actually a retired CIA operative who interrogated double agents.

Meeting the rest of Pam's family and friends, including Debbie's future in-laws, Greg becomes insecure about his relationship with the former when he learns that she was previously engaged. Her ex-fiancé Kevin is amiable, handsome, wealthy, and still on friendly terms with her and her family. He is also the best man in Debbie's wedding.

Despite efforts to impress Pam's family, Greg's inadvertent actions make him an easy target for ridicule. He accidentally injures Debbie during a pool volleyball game, floods the backyard with sewage by flushing a broken toilet, breaks an urn containing the ashes of Jack's mother that Mr. Jinx uses as kitty litter, and loses a cigarette while chasing Mr. Jinx on the roof, inadvertently setting on fire the wedding altar that Kevin built. Jack also suspects that Greg is a marijuana user after he endorses the marijuana interpretation of "Puff, the Magic Dragon". Jack's suspicion increases when he catches Pam's brother Denny retrieving a marijuana pipe from a jacket that he lent to Greg, which Denny hastily lies about being Greg's.

After losing Mr. Jinx, Greg temporarily replaces him with a nearly identical stray whose tail he has spray-painted, while buying time to find the real cat. While the family are at the engagement party, the imposter cat makes a mess of the house, including destroying Debbie's wedding dress. Greg's deception is exposed when a neighbor finds the real Mr. Jinx and Jack confronts Greg, so the entire Byrnes family demands that he leave Long Island.

Jack accuses Greg of lying about taking the Medical College Admission Test because his CIA contacts could not find any record of a Gregory Focker. Greg retaliates by revealing that he has seen Jack engaging in secret meetings, receiving passports and speaking in Thai. He deduces that Jack has taken on a new CIA mission, but Jack angrily reveals that he was arranging a surprise honeymoon in Thailand for Debbie and her fiancé Bob.

A devastated Greg drives to the airport to return to Chicago, but he is detained by airport security for refusing to check his suitcase, which is too large to be a carry-on, and taking out his anger on a flight attendant while shouting "Bomb" on the plane after she told him that it wouldn't fit in the overhead bin.

At the Byrneses' house, Pam shows her parents copies of Greg's MCAT transcript, which his parents faxed to her. As well, the CIA found no record of Greg because his legal name is Gaylord, not Gregory. Jack still believes that Greg is an unsuitable husband for Pam, but Dina lectures him about his consistent disapproval of any man whom Pam brings home. After hearing Pam make a heartfelt phone call to Greg, apologizing for not sticking up for him, Jack realizes that she truly loves him.

Jack rushes to the airport and convinces security to release Greg. The two make peace with each other, and Greg admits his fear of not living up to Jack's unattainable standards. After ensuring Greg's loyalty and devotion to Pam, Jack finally accepts him and asks him to be his son-in-law.

After returning to the Byrneses' home, Greg proposes to Pam while Jack and Dina listen from their bedroom, agreeing that they should now meet his parents. After Debbie's wedding, Jack views footage of Greg recorded by hidden cameras that he had placed around the house, but when Greg finds one of the cameras, he vents his frustrations with Jack.

Cast

Themes

Greg Focker is a middle-class Jewish nurse whose social and cultural position is juxtaposed against the Byrnes family of upper-middle class White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. With respect to Greg as a Jew and a nurse when compared to the Byrnes and Banks families, a distinct cultural gap is created and subsequently widened. The cultural differences are often highlighted, and Greg repeatedly made aware of them. This serves to achieve comedic effect through character development, and has also been commented on as being indicative of thematic portrayal of Jewish characters' roles in modern film, as well as being a prime example of how male nurses are portrayed in media. Speaking about character development in Meet the Parents, director Jay Roach stated that he wanted an opportunity to "do character-driven comedy"

thumb|300px|left|At the insistence of his Christian host, the Jewish Greg agrees to say a prayer to bless the food at the dinner table. Unskilled at this custom, he improvises and recites a part of [[Godspell. This scene served to show a wide social and cultural gap between Greg and the Christian Byrnes family.]]

Anne Bower wrote about Jewish characters at mealtime as part of the broader movement that she believed started in the 1960s, when filmmakers started producing work that explores the "Jewish self-definition". there has been a feminization of the nursing profession over the course of the last century that has often caused men in nursing to be portrayed as misfits by the media. A common stereotype is that of a man who accepts a career in nursing as an unfortunate secondary career choice, either failing to become a physician or still trying to become one. Such stereotyping is due to a presumption that a man would prefer to be a physician but is unable to become one due to lack of intelligence or non-masculine attributes. Jack is often seen openly criticizing Greg's career choice per his perception of nursing being an effeminate profession. In their book Men in Nursing: History, Challenges, and Opportunities, authors Chad O'Lynn and Russell Tranbarger present this as an example of a negative portrayal. Commenting on the same issue but disagreeing, Barbara Cherry, in her book Contemporary Nursing: Issues, Trends, & Management, called the portrayal of Greg as a nurse "one of the most positive film portrayals of men who are nurses", and commented that Greg "humorously addresses and rises above the worst of all stereotypes that are endured by men in this profession". Greg Glienna and Mary Ruth Clarke wrote the original story and screenplay. Glienna also directed and starred in the 72-minute film, which was filmed on 16 mm film in 1991 and released to the general public the following year. The 1992 film also marks one of only several film roles played by comedian Emo Philips that he also helped produce. Film producer Elliot Grove, founder of Raindance Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards, listed the original Meet the Parents on his personal Top Ten list of favorite films where he called it "much funnier and tighter than the Hollywood version". The 1992 film was a featured entry in the 1995 Raindance Film Festival.

Producer Nancy Tenenbaum acquired the rights to the 1992 film.

Writing

Meet the Parents received a generally positive response from film critics, being commended on the subtlety of its humor, as well as being named "the funniest" or "one of the funniest" films of the year by several critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average rating of "A−" on a scale of A+ to F.

Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, called it "the funniest film of the year so far, possibly the most amusing mainstream live-action comedy since There's Something About Mary".

Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine called the film "flat-out hilarious", and Neil Smith of the BBC proclaimed that "there's not a weak scene in this super-funny picture" while awarding it a rating of five stars out of five.

Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it three stars out of four, comparing it to Roach's previous work on the Austin Powers film series and offering his opinion that "[Meet the Parents] is funnier because it never tries too hard".

Jeff Vice of the Deseret News, another detractor of the film, proclaimed that Meet the Parents is "only erratically funny", and accused Roach of taking "the cheap way out with a series of unfunny jokes".

Critic Peter Bradshaw's review in The Guardian concluded, "It is somehow less than the sum of its parts. It strains to come to life, but never quite makes it."

After it was released on home media, DVD reviewer and Rolling Stone magazine contributor Douglas Pratt, in his book Doug Pratt's DVD: Movies, Television, Music, Art, Adult, and More!, stated that "perhaps in the crowded theater the film is hysterical, but in the quieter venue of home video, it just seems sadistic, and as the humor evaporates, the holes in the plot become clearer".

Accolades

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"

|-

! Award

! Category

! Nominee(s)

! Result

|-

| Academy Awards

| Best Original Song

| "A Fool in Love" <br> Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman

|

|-

| rowspan="3"| American Comedy Awards

| colspan="2"| Funniest Motion Picture

|

|-

| rowspan="2"| Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture (Leading Role)

| Robert De Niro

|

|-

| Ben Stiller

|

|-

| ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards

| Top Box Office Films

| Randy Newman

|

|-

| rowspan="5"| Blockbuster Entertainment Awards

| rowspan="2"| Favorite Actor – Comedy/Romance

| Robert De Niro

|

|-

| Ben Stiller

|

|-

| Favorite Supporting Actor – Comedy

| Owen Wilson

|

|-

| Favorite Supporting Actress – Comedy

| Blythe Danner

|

|-

| Favorite Female – Newcomer

| Teri Polo

|

|-

| Bogey Awards

| colspan="2"| Bogey Award

|

|-

| Golden Globe Awards

| Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

| Robert De Niro

|

|-

| Golden Screen Awards

| colspan="2"| Golden Screen

|

|-

| Golden Trailer Awards

| colspan="2"| Best Comedy

|

|-

| Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards

| Best Original Song

| "Meet the Parents" <br> Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman

|

|-

| rowspan="3"| MTV Movie Awards

| Best Comedic Performance

| Ben Stiller

|

|-

| Best On-Screen Team

| Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller

|

|-

| Best Line

| "Are You a Pothead, Focker?" – Robert De Niro

|

|-

| People's Choice Awards

| colspan="2"| Favorite Comedy Motion Picture

|

|-

| Satellite Awards

| Best Original Song

| "A Fool in Love" <br> Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman

|

|-

| rowspan="2"| Teen Choice Awards

| colspan="2"| Choice Movie – Comedy

|

|-

| Choice Movie – Actor

| Ben Stiller

|

|}

Others

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

  • 2005: AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movie Quotes:
  • Jack Byrnes: "I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?" – Nominated

During an appearance for Rotten Tomatoes to promote the film Fifty Shades of Black, actor Marlon Wayans cited the film as one of his five favorite films.

Influence

The success of the film was initially responsible for a 2002 NBC reality television show titled Meet My Folks, in which a young woman's love interest, vying for her family's approval, is interrogated by the woman's overprotective father with the help of a lie detector machine. In September 2002, NBC also aired a situation comedy titled In-Laws. During the development of it, NBC called it "a Meet the Parents project", which prompted an investigation by Universal into whether NBC was infringing on Universal's copyright. Universal did not pursue any action against NBC, but neither show lasted more than one season. NBC and Universal would merge in 2004.

In 2004, Meet the Fockers was released as a sequel to the film. Also directed by Jay Roach, with a screenplay by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg, it chronicles the events that take place when the Byrnes family meets Bernie and Roz Focker, Greg's parents, played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand. The producers intended for them to be the opposite of the Byrneses' conservative, upper class, WASPy demeanor; to that effect, producer Jane Rosenthal explained that "Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand were our dream team". The sequel proved to be another financial success, grossing $280 million domestically and $516 million worldwide, outperforming Meet the Parents by a large margin and finishing as the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2004.

In February 2007, Universal Studios announced that it would be making a second sequel in the franchise, titled Little Fockers. It was to be directed by Roach, with the screenplay written by Larry Stuckey, Roach's former assistant. The plane was met by a bomb squad from the local sheriff's office, as well as the FBI, whose agents questioned its 176 passengers about the note.

See also

  • 2000 in film
  • Cinema of the United States
  • List of American films of 2000

References

Further reading

  • (Archived)