Fan-Favorite Family Comedy On Netflix Lands Every Gag And Holds Up Decades Later

By Robert Scucci
| Published 43 seconds ago

In preparation for Focker-in-Law‘s Thanksgiving release, I’ve been slowly revisiting the Meet the Parents franchise because, generally speaking, I like it. I most recently reviewed Little Fockers because I knew it was the franchise’s low point and wanted to get it out of the way. I saw it in theaters, barely remembered it because it was so inconsequential, and all it made me want to do was revisit the first two films because they’re both great.

I was initially apprehensive about revisiting 2000’s Meet the Parents, a film I’ve probably seen a dozen times, because I was worried it wouldn’t hold up. The thing is, Meet the Parents is a masterclass in miscommunication and escalation, making it one of the best widely released romantic comedies of its era. Meet the Fockers builds on that energy and makes for a fantastic sequel, though my memory could be deceiving me until I give it a proper rewatch.

Every seemingly innocuous setup in Meet the Parents has a satisfying payoff, and not a single gag is wasted or rushed. Most importantly, the first two films, especially Meet the Parents, still feel fresh because it’s our first time spending time with these characters. Learning about their individual personalities and how they interact with each other is where most of the comedy comes from. Little Fockers isn’t nearly as memorable because it plays more like a “here we go again” kind of film, whereas its predecessors get their laughs by actively developing these characters while introducing multiple conflicts.

The Quick And Dirty Rundown

On its face, Meet the Parents is your typical rom-com about a man trying to win the approval of his girlfriend’s parents, and then it goes completely off the rails. 

Ben Stiller’s Greg Focker wants to propose to his girlfriend, Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo), not knowing that her father, Jack (Robert De Niro), is a former CIA interrogator with an uncanny ability to sniff out deception. While visiting the Byrnes’ home for the weekend, Greg learns this firsthand, kicking off a series of incidents that not only make him look like a fool, but also like a total psychopath. It also introduces us to the “circle of trust” that Jack has created for his family, implying that if that trust is breached, the consequences will be dire.

Here’s how things go for Greg in Meet the Parents: the airport loses his luggage, forcing him to borrow clothes from the Byrnes family. It’s a simple conflict, but when the airline allegedly finds his luggage and accidentally ships the wrong bag to the Byrnes’ house well into the second act, it backfires spectacularly. Greg is generally an honest guy, but he’s completely intimidated by Jack. Whenever Jack grills him on literally any topic, Greg nervously blurts out a white lie. Those lies compound exponentially, making Jack believe that everything coming out of Greg’s mouth is deceptive.

Pam throws Greg’s pack of cigarettes onto the roof in one of the earliest scenes because Jack sees smoking as a “sign of weakness,” and we see how disastrously that decision turns out during the rehearsal dinner for Pam’s younger sister Debbie (Nicole DeHuff) and her fiancé Bob (Thomas McCarthy). The disaster involves a heavily lacquered altar hand-built by Pam’s ex-fiancé Kevin Rawley (Owen Wilson), who, in Jack’s mind, is the man who got away from his favorite daughter.

Greg’s medical qualifications are repeatedly called into question because he willingly works as a nurse despite acing his MCATs and supposedly being able to pursue any career in medicine that he wants. Then Jack’s cat, Mr. Jinx, takes an immediate dislike to Greg, and Jack finds a marijuana pipe in Greg’s coat pocket shortly after an awkward conversation about Peter, Paul and Mary’s hit song “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” Jack never once stops to consider that the pipe might belong to Denny (John Abrahams), his own son, who owns the jacket.

These exchanges make Greg look like the worst person imaginable in Jack’s eyes, and they make you cringe because all he really needs to do is stop and explain himself for 10 seconds, something he never properly does at any point in Meet the Parents.

Every Single Setup Pays Off

This might sound like comedy writing 101, but my biggest gripe with lesser films is that they follow a painfully obvious setup-to-punchline formula. Somebody says, “Don’t press the red button,” and then three seconds later, somebody presses it.

Meet the Parents does the exact opposite. It plants little seeds from the very beginning, with the humor coming from how much later something is going to blow wildly out of proportion for Greg. The cheap champagne he buys pops open and shatters Jack’s mother’s urn sitting on the mantel, which is the very same urn Greg joked about earlier because he thought it was one of Jack’s sleek new nanny cams.

The debate over whether a cat can flush a toilet culminates in a septic overflow on the day of the rehearsal dinner, and suddenly it’s Greg against his potential new father-in-law’s special little guy. Every first-act exchange that initially feels like a passing comment comes back in the worst possible way, making it impossible for Greg to save face.

Watching Meet the Parents was a breath of fresh air after forcing myself through Little Fockers because this is the real deal. Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller’s characters are still reading the room and just beginning to figure each other out. By the time we get to the third film, it’s “been there, done that, how do we milk this cat?” Luckily, Meet the Parents, which is currently streaming on Netflix alongside the rest of the franchise, tells you exactly how to milk a cat because, according to Greg, you can milk anything with nipples. Just don’t tell Jack.