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Meet the Parents

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Meet the Parents
International Poster
Directed byJay Roach
Written byGreg Glienna (1992 screenplay)
Mary Ruth Clarke (1992 screenplay)
James Herzfeld
John Hamburg
Produced byRobert De Niro
Jay Roach
Jane Rosenthal
Nancy Tenenbaum
StarringBen Stiller
Robert De Niro
Teri Polo
Blythe Danner
Owen Wilson
Music byRandy Newman
Distributed by- North America -
Universal Studios
- International -
DreamWorks
Release date
October 6 2000
Running time
108 min.
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$55,000,000
Box office$330,444,045

Meet the Parents is a 2000 American comedy film written by Greg Glienna and directed by Jay Roach of Austin Powers fame. Starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, the film chronicles a series of unfortunate events that befall a good hearted but hapless male nurse while visiting his girlfriend's parents.

The film's initial budget of $55 million was earned back in eleven days and the film went on to become one of the highest grossing films of 2000, earning over $160 million from October 6 until December 31. The success of Meet the Parents inspired a 2004 sequel Meet the Fockers as well as a reality television show entitled Meet My Folks in 2002. In 2007, Universal Studios announced yet another sequel titled Little Fockers.

Distributed by Universal Studios and DreamWorks, Meet the Parents was well received by film critics and viewers alike, receiving mostly positive reviews from critics and earning the Favorite Comedy Motion Picture award at the 2001 People's Choice Awards.

Plot

Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is a male nurse living in Chicago. He intends to propose to his girlfriend Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo), a schoolteacher. His plans are disrupted by the news that Pam's sister Debbie (Nicole DeHuff) is getting married and Greg and Pam are invited to spend the weekend before the wedding at Pam's parents' house in Oyster Bay, New York on (Long Island). Hoping to make the best of the situation, Greg now plans to propose to Pam in front of her family and brings the engagement ring he bought for Pam with him.

At the Byrnes family home, Greg meets Pam's father Jack (Robert De Niro), mother Dina (Blythe Danner) and their beloved cat Mr. Jinx. Jack takes an instant dislike towards Greg and, subtly at first but more openly as time goes by, criticizes Greg for his choice of career as a male nurse and anything else he sees as a difference between Greg and the Byrnes family. Greg desperately tries to impress Jack but his efforts fail one by one. Greg presents the family with a bottle of cheap champagne he purchased at a local drug store; while trying to open the bottle, the cork flies out of the bottle and hits the urn containing the ashes of Jack's beloved mother, breaking the urn and spilling the ashes on the ground, upsetting Jack even further.

File:Meettheparentsinter.jpg
Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) administers a lie detector test to Greg Focker (Ben Stiller)

Greg is now already intimidated by Jack. He becomes even more intimidated when Pam informs him that Jack is a retired CIA operative, not a florist as Pam had told Greg earlier; Pam informed Greg of this fact after Jack administered an impromptu lie detector test to Greg in the middle of the night. Adding to Greg's problems is the fact that the airline company had lost his bag in which he packed the engagement ring thereby putting on hold his plans to propose to Pam.

Meeting the rest of Pam's family and friends, including Pam's ex-boyfriend Kevin Rawley (Owen Wilson), Greg still feels like an outsider. Despite honest efforts to impress the family, Greg keeps doing things to make himself an easy target for ridicule and even anger; he inadvertently causes Debbie a broken nose and a black eye just before her wedding, he uses a malfunctioning toilet and causes the Byrnes' back yard to become flooded with sewage, and he sets on fire a wedding altar that was recently delivered to the Byrnes' home back yard. Later, Greg inadvertently lets Jinx out of the house and is unable to catch him again. As the terrified Byrnes family launches into a frenzied search, Greg, desperate to prove himself worthy to the family, finds a similar stray cat at a local animal shelter and spray paints its tail to make it look like Jinxie. Hailed as a hero, Greg quickly becomes the villain again when a neighbour of the Byrnes' calls with the news that Jinx wandered into the house next door and Jack discovers Greg's cover up scheme.

By now, the entire Byrnes family, including Pam, agrees that it's best for Greg to leave Long Island until the wedding is concluded. Unwillingly, Greg leaves and goes to the airport where he is detained by airport security for insisting that his bag, the same one previously lost by the airline company, stay with him rather than be checked. Back at the Byrnes household, Jack tries to convince Pam that Greg was lying to her about everything and, as proof, he explains that his friends at the CIA were unable to find any proof of any Greg Focker ever taking the MCAT which Greg claimed he had passed (with the initial intention of becoming a doctor). Upon learning that Greg's real first name is Gaylord and being presented with proof from Pam that he did in fact pass the test well, Jack realizes that Pam loves Greg and that she wants to marry him. Jack rushes to the airport, convinces the airport security to release Greg and brings him back to the Byrnes household to a grateful Pam.

As Greg is proposing to Pam, Jack and Dina listen in on their conversation from another room, agreeing that everything did, in fact, turn out in the best interest of their daughter and the only thing left to do is to meet Greg's parents.

Cast and characters

  • Robert De Niro as Jack Byrnes: Pam's father and a retired CIA operative who is overly protective of his family and has a hard time warming up to his daughters' love interests.[1] Shortly after De Niro finished filming The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Universal Studios suggested to Roach that he should cast De Niro for the role to which Roach agrees that he had "no reservations whatsoever."[2]
  • Ben Stiller as Gaylord "Greg" Focker: A male nurse who loves his girlfriend and tries desperately to impress her parents by any means, even if that includes telling little white lies about himself which are then covered up with bigger lies and elaborate cover-up schemes.[1] Roach admits that Stiller was the best choice for this role because "nobody plays that kind of material better than Ben"[2]
  • Teri Polo as Pam Byrnes: A schoolteacher, Pam is Greg's girlfriend. She acts as a mediator between Greg and the Byrnes family, especially her father Jack.
  • Blythe Danner as Dina Byrnes: Jack's wife, Pam's mother.
  • Owen Wilson as Kevin Rawley: Pam's ex-fiancee, a fiancial investor who is recently rich and has a love for woodworking.
  • Nicole DeHuff as Debbie Byrnes: Pam's sister.
  • Jon Abrahams as Denny Byrnes: The youngest child of the Jack and Dina Byrnes.
  • Thomas McCarthy as Bob Banks: Debbie's fiancé.
  • James Rebhorn as Larry Banks: Bob Banks' father, Larry is a close friend of Jack's and takes almost as much pleasure in ridiculing Greg as Jack does.
  • Phyllis George as Linda Banks: Larry's wife, Bob's mother.

Production

Meet the Parents is a remake of a 1992 independent film of the same name which has since been pulled from all distribution.[3] Greg Glienna co-wrote, directed and starred in the 76 minute film.[4][5]

Universal Studios had purchased the rights to Greg Glienna's 1992 film and then approached screenwriter James Herzfeld to re-write the screenplay.[6] Herzfeld expanded the modest script and he initially presented it to Roach who had, up to that point, finished the first two Austin Powers films. Roach admits to have liked the script from the beginning and was very much willing to make the film even though he thought "it needed more work."[2] Universal declined to have relatively inexperienced Roach take on the project due to interest from Steven Spielberg who wanted to direct and produce the film with Jim Carrey playing the role of Greg Focker.[6][2] However, most likely due to scheduling conflicts, Spielberg and Carrey never took the project past the planning stages.[2] The script was then returned to Roach who had by now taken on his next project of Mystery, Alaska but was still interested in making Meet the Parents.

Upon the suggestion of Universal Studios, Roach cast De Niro in the role of Jack Byrnes due to critical acclaim of De Niro's recent comedy work in films such as Analyze This and in the live-action/animated film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.[2] Stiller was cast after De Niro and Roach claims to have cast him for the role of Greg Focker because he could think of no one better. Additionally, Roach was also impressed with Stiller's improvisational and ad lib abilities and the film contains at least one scene where the dialogue was completely improvised by Stiller.[2]

Reception

Box office performance

Meet the Parents was a financial success, taking in USD $28.6 million during its opening weekend and averaging $10,950 per theatre in a total of 2,614 theaters. It spent four weeks as the #1 film at the U.S. box office[7] and, by the close date of March 29, 2001 the film had grossed $166.2 million in the United States, and a total of $330.4 million worldwide,[8] making it the seventh highest grossing film of the year.[9]. The film's opening weekend earnings were the highest ever for any film released in the month of October as well as the marking the highest opening weekend earnings for a Robert De Niro film.[10]

Critical reception

As of October 14, 2008, the aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes registered an 84% positive response based on reviews from 137 critics[11] while at the same time Metacritic, another aggregate review website, registered a rating of 73 out of 100, based on 33 reviews, [12] which is classified as Generally favorable reviews by the website's rating system.[13] Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine called the film "flat-out hilarious"[14] and Neil Smith of BBCi proclaimed that "there's not a weak scene in this super-funny picture."[15] Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four comparing the film 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".[16] Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly called the script "unforced" and concluded that the film "goes down like a flute of Champagne, leaving an aftertaste of giggles".[17]

However, the popular internet film critic James Berardinelli, in spite of awarding it two and a half stars out of four, gave the film a somewhat scathing review. On his website ReelViews.net, Berardinelli wrote that "Meet the Parents is put together like a TV sit-com", that Roach "strings together a series of hit-and-miss lowbrow gags with little care for whether any of the connecting material is coherent, interesting, or enjoyable (in most cases, it's none of those three)" and concluding that "even with Stiller and De Niro, Meet the Parents is an encounter that can be postponed until it's available on video."[18] Jeff Vice of the Deseret News, another detractor of the film, proclaimed Meet the Parents "only erratically funny" and accused Roach of taking "the cheap way out with a series of unfunny jokes".[19]

Awards

Wins

Nominations

Legacy

The success of Meet the Parents was intially responsible for a 2002 NBC reality television show entitled 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..[27][28][29] In September of 2002, NBC also aired a situation comedy entitled In-Laws. During the development of the sitcom, NBC called it "a Meet the Parents project" which prompted an investigation by Universal into whether or not NBC was infringing on Universal's copyright.[30] Universal did not pursue any action against NBC but neither show lasted more than one season.

In 2004, Meet the Fockers was released as a sequel to Meet the Parents.[31][32] Directed again by Jay Roach with a screenplay by James Herzfeld and John Hamburg, the sequel 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 respectively. The producers intended for Greg's parents to be the opposite of the Byrnes' conservative, upper class, WASPy demeanor; to that effect, producer Jane Rosenthal explains that "Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand were our dream team."[33] Despite relatively unfavourable critical reviews (39% rating at Rotten Tomatoes as of October 10, 2008),[34] Meet the Fockers proved to be another financial success grossing $280 million domestically and $516 million worldwide,[35] outperforming Meet the Parents by a large margin and finishing as the fourth highest grossing film of 2004.[36]

In February 2007, Universal Studios announced that they will be making a third sequel in the franchise, tentatively titled Little Fockers.[37][38][39] The film will, again, be directed by Roach but the screenplay will this time be written by Larry Stuckey, Roach's former assistant.[37][39] The studio intends to bring back De Niro, Stiller, Polo, Danner as well as Hoffman and Streisand.[37][39]

References

  1. ^ a b Wells, Jeffrey. The Parent Trap, Reel.com. Accessed October 9, 2008
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Jay Roach talks about his hit film Meet the Parents and spewing sewage on Robert De Niro, Barnes & Noble, March 5, 2001. Accessed October 9, 2008.
  3. ^ Chyn, Stina. Meet The Parents, Film Threat, June 7, 2005. Accessed May 26, 2008.
  4. ^ Ayscough, Suzan. Meet the Parents, Variety, August 13, 1992. Accessed May 28, 2008.
  5. ^ Wooten, Amy. Greg Glienna: Meet the Comic, Windy City Times, May 31, 2008. Accessed May 28, 2008.
  6. ^ a b Gunn, Elston. Ten Questions with MEET THE PARENTS screenwriter Jim Herzfeld, screenwritersutopia.com, March 11, 2004. Accessed October 9, 2008.
  7. ^ Associated Press. 'Blair Witch' sequel has disappointing box-office debut, CNN, October 29, 2000. Accessed May 26, 2008.
  8. ^ Meet the Parents (2000), Box Office Mojo. Accessed May 26, 2008.
  9. ^ 2000 Yearly Box Office Results, Box Office Mojo. Accessed May 30, 2008.
  10. ^ De Niro's parental charms, BBC News, October 9, 2000. Accessed October 9, 2008.
  11. ^ Meet the Parents, Rotten Tomatoes. Accessed October 14, 2008.
  12. ^ Meet the Parents, Metacritic. Accessed October 14, 2008.
  13. ^ About Metascores. How We Calculate Our Scores: The Short Summary, Metacritic. Accessed May 26, 2008.
  14. ^ McCarthy, Todd. Meet the Parents, Variety, October 1, 2000. Accessed October 9, 2008.
  15. ^ Smith, Neil. Meet the Parents (2000), BBCi, December 11, 2000. Accessed October 9, 2008.
  16. ^ Ebert, Roger. Meet The Parents, Chicago Sun-Times, October 6, 2000. Accessed May 26, 2008.
  17. ^ Schwarzbaum, Lisa. Vetting Day Blues, Entertainment Weekly, October 6, 2000. Accessed May 30, 2008.
  18. ^ Berardinelli, James. Meet the Parents, ReelViews.net. Accessed October 8, 2008.
  19. ^ Vice, Jeff. Meet the Parents, Deseret News, October 6, 2000. Accessed October 8, 2008.
  20. ^ The Associated Press. Gibson, Green Mile Find Favor, CBS News, January 8, 2001. Accessed October 14, 2008.
  21. ^ MTV Movie Awards 2001, MTV.com. Accessed October 14, 2008.
  22. ^ American Comedy Awards Air Tonight on Comedy Central, Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2001. Accessed October 14, 2008.
  23. ^ Top Box Office, ASCAP.com. Accessed October 14, 2008.
  24. ^ The 58th Annual Golden Globe Awards (2001), GoldenGlobes.org. Accessed October 14, 2008.
  25. ^ Oscar nominees in full, BBC News, February 13, 2001. Accessed October 14, 2008.
  26. ^ Dutka, Elaine. Arts and Entertainment Reports From the Times, News Services and the Nation’s Press, Los Angeles Times, March 3, 2001. Accessed October 14, 2008.
  27. ^ Gallo, Phil. Meet My Folks, Variety, July 21, 2002. Accessed May 27, 2008.
  28. ^ Fenwick, Alexandra. Meet My Folks brings a fiance's worst nightmare to television, The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, September 13, 2002. Accessed October 10, 2008.
  29. ^ Isaac, Steven. Meet My Folks, Plugged In, February 2003. Accessed October 10, 2008.
  30. ^ Lynette Rice and Dan Snierson. On the Air, Entertainment Weekly, August 9, 2002. Accessed October 10, 2008.
  31. ^ Clinton, Paul. Review: Formulaic 'Fockers' fitfully funny. Sequel has moments, but a comedown from original, CNN, December 22, 2004. Accessed May 27, 2008.
  32. ^ Tyrangiel, Josh. High Drama, Low Comedy, CNN, December 6, 2004. Accessed May 27, 2008.
  33. ^ Universal Studio. "Meet the Fockers" Movie Production Notes, Entertainment Magazine, December 22, 2004. Accessed October 10, 2008.
  34. ^ Meet the Fockers, Rotten Tomatoes. Accessed October 10, 2008.
  35. ^ Meet The Fockers, Box Office Mojo. Accessed October 10, 2008.
  36. ^ 2004 Yearly Box Office Results, Box Office Mojo. Accessed October 10, 2008.
  37. ^ a b c Michael Fleming, Diane Garrett. More 'Fockers' for Universal. Tribeca deal paves way for third movie, Variety, February 22, 2007. Accessed May 26, 2008.
  38. ^ Third Fockers Movie On The Horizon, Empire, February 23, 2007. Accessed May 28, 2008.
  39. ^ a b c Martindale, Stone. 'Little Fockers' given the go from Universal, Monsters and Critics, February 23, 2007. Accessed October 10, 2008.
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