Meet the Parents

Meet the Parents is a 2000 American comedy written by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg and directed by Jay Roach. Starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, it chronicles a series of unfortunate events that befall a good-hearted but hapless nurse while visiting his girlfriend's parents. Teri Polo, Blythe Danner, and Owen Wilson also star.

The film is a remake of a 1992 film of the same name directed by Greg Glienna and produced by Jim Vincent. Glienna—who also played the original one's main protagonist—and Mary Ruth Clarke cowrote the screenplay. Universal Pictures purchased the rights to Glienna's film with the intent of creating a new version. Jim Herzfeld expanded the original script but development was halted for some time. Jay Roach read the expanded script and expressed his desire to direct it but Universal declined him. At that time, Steven Spielberg was interested in doing so while Jim Carrey was interested in playing the lead role. The studio only offered the film to Roach once Spielberg and Carrey left the project.

Released in the United States and Canada on October 6, 2000 and distributed by Universal Pictures, the film earned back its initial budget of $55 million in only eleven days. It went on to become one of the highest-grossing films of 2000, earning over $160 million in North America and over $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. The success of the film inspired two sequels, namely Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers released in 2004 and 2010 respectively. It also inspired a reality television show titled Meet My Folks and a situation comedy titled In-Laws, both of them debuting on NBC in 2002.

Plot
Gaylord "Greg" Focker is a nurse living in Chicago. He intends to propose to his girlfriend, Pam Byrnes, but his plan is disrupted when they are invited to the wedding of Pam's sister, Debbie, at their parents' house on Long Island. Greg decides to impress Pam's parents first, and propose to her in front of her family but this plan is put on hold when the airline company loses his luggage which contains the engagement ring.

At the Byrnes' house, Greg meets Pam's father, Jack, mother, Dina, and their beloved cat, Jinx. Jack becomes immediately suspicious towards Greg and openly criticizes him for his choice of career as a male nurse and anything else he sees as a difference between Greg and the Byrnes family. Greg attempts to impress Jack but his efforts fail. He becomes even more uncomfortable after he receives an impromptu lie detector test from Jack and later learns from Pam that Jack is a retired CIA operative.

Meeting the rest of Pam's family and friends, Greg still feels like an outsider. Despite efforts to impress her family, her inadvertent actions make him an easy target for ridicule and anger. He unintentionally gives Debbie a broken nose and black eye during a pool volleyball game, uses a malfunctioning toilet which floods the Byrnes' backyard with sewage, and sets the wedding altar on fire. Several misunderstandings also cause Jack to believe Greg is a marijuana user. Later, Greg loses Jinx and replaces him with a stray whose tail he spray paints to make him look like Jinx which happens to also make a mess of the house (though the real Jinx is later found).

By now, the entire Byrnes family, including Pam, agrees that it is best for Greg to leave Long Island until the wedding concludes. Desperate to save himself, Greg reveals he has seen Jack engaging in some secret activity with some shady characters, and is planning a secret mission after the wedding, thus he was just as secretive as Greg was. Jack angrily reveals that the secret mission was a surprise honeymoon for Debbie and her fiancé, and Greg realizes he only dug himself deeper into a hole. Unwillingly, he goes to the airport where he is detained by airport security for insisting that his luggage stays with him rather than be inspected. Back at the Byrnes' house, Jack attempts to convince Pam that Greg was lying to her about everything. He claims to be unable to find records of anyone named "Greg Focker" ever taking the Medical College Admission Test which Greg claimed he had passed with the initial intention of becoming a doctor. Upon learning that Greg's real name is Gaylord, and being presented with proof from Pam that he did in fact pass the test, Jack realizes that Pam truly loves Greg. He rushes to the airport, convinces airport security to release Greg and brings him back to the Byrnes' house.

As Greg is proposing to Pam, Jack and Dina listen in on their conversation from another room, agreeing that they should now meet Greg's parents. After Debbie's wedding, Jack views footage of Greg recorded by hidden cameras that he had placed strategically around the house.

Cast

 * Ben Stiller as Gaylord "Greg" Focker
 * Robert De Niro as Jack Byrnes
 * Teri Polo as Pam Byrnes
 * Blythe Danner as Dina Byrnes
 * Nicole DeHuff as Deborah "Debbie" Byrnes
 * Jon Abrahams as Denny Byrnes
 * Owen Wilson as Kevin Rawley
 * James Rebhorn as Dr. Larry Banks
 * Tom McCarthy as Dr. Robert "Bob" Banks
 * Phyllis George as Linda Banks

Theatrical run
The film had its theatrical release in United States and Canada on October 6, 2000. Distributed domestically by Universal Studios, it had an advertising budget of $33.9 million. It quickly proved to be a financial success taking in $28.6 million during its opening weekend and averaging $10,950 per theater in a total of 2,614 theaters. It finished as the top earning film for the weekend of October 6–8 beating the second placer Remember the Titans by a margin of over $9 million and bringing in more than four times the earnings of Get Carter, the next highest earning film released that same weekend. It opening weekend earnings were the highest ever for any film released in the month of October as well as marking the highest opening weekend earnings for a film starring Robert De Niro. Its earnings for the second week of release dropped by 26% down to $21.1 million, which still kept it at No.1 at the box office beating Remember the Titans by a margin of over $8 million. By the end of the second week of release, it had already grossed over $58 million, surpassing its production budget of $55 million. It spent its first four weeks of theatrical release as the highest-grossing film at the U.S. box office. It was displaced from No.1 during the weekend of November 3–5 by the newly released Charlie's Angels while still managing to stay ahead of The Legend of Bagger Vance, another new release that debuted at number 3. It remained in the Top 10 grossing films until its 11th week. In the United Kingdom, it had its theatrical premiere on December 15, 2000 and was distributed by United International Pictures (UIP). There, it managed to earn over $21 million during its run. In Australia, also being distributed by UIP, it was released on December 26, 2000 where it earned over $11 million during the theatrical run.

At the end of its theatrical run on March 29, 2001 – 25 weeks after its opening day in North America, the film had grossed $166.2 million in the United States and a total of $330.4 million worldwide, making it the seventh highest-grossing film of the year both domestically and worldwide.

Home media
The film was released on VHS & DVD on March 6, 2001. The DVD sales for it were successful, taking in over $200 million for 2001.Billboard magazine listed it as having the highest video sales for all weeks from March 31 up to and including April 21, being the top selling DVD for the weeks of March 24 and March 31, and being the top rented video for the weeks of April 7 and April 14.

The DVD release provides only the letterbox format of the film and is also 108 minutes in length. The aspect ratio is 1.85:1 with an accommodation for an enhanced 16:9 playback. English language audio tracks available with the film are a 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS with the main noticeable difference being only a slightly louder bass on one of the tracks. A French language audio track is also available only in 5.1 Dolby Digital Format. Additionally, English language subtitles are provided as well. The single disc "Collector's Edition" contains two audio commentaries, one a light-hearted and humorous discussion between Roach, Stiller, De Niro, and producer Jane Rosenthal and the other a more formal technical commentary on the film-making aspects by the director and editor Jon Poll. The director discusses issues that include working with the cast, utilizing the best camera angles for comedic effect, discussing scenes that were improvised and scenes that were scripted, and commenting on issues surrounding shooting on location. The editor speaks about putting together the best functioning comedy from material that was filmed and discusses some deleted scenes that were excluded from the DVD release. In addition, the DVD features a twelve-minute outtake section, three minutes of deleted scenes, and Universal's Spotlight on Location featurette. Spotlight on Location is a standard 24-minute-long featurette about the making of the film which includes interviews with the cast members and contains behind-the-scenes footage. It also contains two games called Take The Lie Detector Test and The Forecaster Game as well as PC material such as wallpapers and screensavers. The region 2 edition of the DVD was released on October 22, 2001. A region 1 "Bonus Edition" was released on December 14, 2004 and contains three additional featurettes: Silly Cat Tricks, The Truth About Lying and a 12-minute-long Jay Roach: A Director's Profile.

Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for the film was released on September 26, 2000 on the DreamWorks Records record label. The soundtrack features 14 original compositions by Randy Newman as well as additional tracks by Bobby Womack, Lee Dorsey, and Dr. John and a hidden bonus track. Newman's original song "A Fool in Love" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song—Newman's 14th Oscar nomination—at the 73rd Academy Awards but it ultimately lost to Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed" for Wonder Boys. For the same song, Newman also won the 16th Annual ASCAP Film & Television Music Award in the Top Box Office Films category and was nominated at the 5th Golden Satellite Awards in the Original Song category. Dan Goldwasser, in his review of the soundtrack for SoundtrackNet, gave credit to Newman and the soundtrack for doing "an excellent job keeping the humor level high.

Critical reception
The film received a generally positive response from film critics, being commended on the subtlety of its humor as well as being named as "the funniest" or "one of the funniest" films of the year by several critics. As of June 3, 2017, the aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes registered an 84% positive response based on reviews from 148 critics and certified the film "Fresh" with an average rating of 6.9/10. The given consensus is: "Despite sometimes sitcom-like execution, Meet the Parents is a hilarious look at familial relationships that works mostly because the chemistry between its two leads is so effective." As of the same date, Metacritic, another aggregate review website, registered a rating of 73 out of 100, based on 33 reviews, which is classified as "Generally favorable reviews" by the website's rating system. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.

Kenneth Turan, film critic for 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." Critic Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal stated that the film "does almost everything right with a story about everything going wrong" and that it "works up a major comic delirium on the theme of Murphy's Law", concluding that "Meet the Parents is the funniest movie of the year." CNN's Paul Clinton proclaimed "Meet the Parents is one of the best comedies of this – or any other – year", calling it "wonderfully funny" and expressing his hope that "the Academy will also recognize this wonderful movie, something it rarely does when it comes to comedies." Time magazine's film critic Richard Schickel stated that it was "divinely invented and perfectly orchestrated". He complimented the screenplay by calling the screenwriters Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg "a couple of skilled tool-and-die makers" as well as the acting cast because he believed that they "understand that palpable reality will always trump frenzied fantasy when it comes to getting laughs." Schickel concluded his review by proclaiming Meet the Parents a "superbly antic movie". Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine called the film "flat-out hilarious" and Neil Smith of 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." Critic Christopher Null of AMC's Filmcritic.com claimed that "Meet the Parents is one of the funniest comedies I've seen since Annie Hall". Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly called the script "unforced" and concluded that it "goes down like a flute of Champagne, leaving an aftertaste of giggles.