Meet the Parents wants you to think one character is the movie’s villain, but the actual antagonist of the classic 2000s comedy is someone else entirely. Released in the year 2000 to rave reviews, Meet the Parents grossed over $300 million and launched one of the most successful comedy franchises of the decade.
The basic principle is quite simple, and the movie explores one of life’s most awkward moments. As the title suggests, Meet the Parents is all about getting to know your spouse’s family, and all their baggage. The Jay Roach flick takes things to the next level, pitting the socially awkward male nurse, Greg (Ben Stiller), against his girlfriend’s possessive father, Jack (Robert De Niro). A truly catastrophic visit ensues.
Meet the Parents is a quintessential cringe comedy, and it gets its laughs through hilarious misunderstandings. Continual communication breakdown leads to unforgettable moments, and things get more and more ridiculous as the story progresses. The sequels continue that trend, finding new ways to humiliate Greg and put him in increasingly embarrassing situations. Though the series has been on hiatus for more than 15 years, a new sequel is on the horizon.
Focker in Law is coming in November, and is already promising to deliver the same cringe-inducing laughs for a new generation. The new sequel will inevitably spur interest in the original film, and the classic blockbuster is bound to be a hit on streaming again. With nearly three decades passing since its release, the true nature of Meet the Parents is revealing itself. The film’s real villain isn’t who you thought it was.
The Movie Wants You To Think Jack Is The Real Villain
From the first time he appears on the screen, Meet the Parents wants you to think Jack is the real villain. Robert De Niro’s tough-as-nails father character gives Greg a hard time from the word go, and he’s in stark contrast to his diplomatic wife, Dina (Blythe Danner). He doesn’t give Greg the benefit of the doubt, and constantly forces his daughter’s boyfriend to prove himself.
That’s to be expected from a protective father, but the lengths that Jack goes to are not only hilarious, but are downright villainous if Meet the Parents happened in real life. It’s one thing to be skeptical, but subjecting Greg to a lie-detector test and constantly grilling him on every detail of his life is beyond the pale. Obviously, the movie is exaggerated on purpose, and every character is a bit cartoonish.
Nevertheless, Jack is clearly positioned as the villain even in promotional materials. The story structure also supports Jack being the antagonist, since it’s his reconciliation with Greg that serves as the resolution of the movie’s dramatic finale. Comedy films like Meet the Parents don’t have villains per se, but a comedy’s villain is often the character whose actions cause bad things to happen to the main character. Despite all that, Jack isn’t really the antagonist.
Pamela Is The Real Villain Of Meet The Parents
Though Greg spends the entire film trying and failing to impress Jack, it’s actually Pamela (Teri Polo) who he must impress. She knows that Jack is a bloodhound, and yet she does almost nothing to prepare Greg or mitigate the circumstances. She instantly takes a back seat, and throws Greg to the wolves with no support whatsoever.
Whether she’s forcing Greg to have an awkward interaction with her brother, or constantly making him uncomfortable by idolizing her ex-boyfriend, she’s actually very harsh to her would-be fiancé. Sure, Greg makes things worse by being so bad at communicating, but she neglects him in favor of her original family dynamic. It’s like he doesn’t even exist as soon as she reenters her childhood home.
She sees how harshly her father, and the rest of the family, treats Greg, but is unable to understand why he might lie in order to impress them. The “take it or leave it” approach forces Greg to come to her, instead of meeting him in the middle. As with Jack’s over-the-top antics, Pamela’s sly antagonism is actually the point of the movie. She’s clearly intended to be the villain, even if the film tries to disguise that fact.
Meet the Parents looks like a ridiculous romp on the surface, but Pamela’s character shows there is a richness to the film that isn’t readily apparent. It’s the lack of communication between Greg and Pamela that causes all the problems, and their relationship isn’t as strong as it appears in the opening scenes. When she apologizes in the end, it proves they have both grown and matured. For a movie that’s so silly, Meet the Parents has depth.
- Release Date
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October 6, 2000
- Runtime
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108 minutes
- Director
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Jay Roach
- Writers
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Jim Herzfeld, John Hamburg
- Producers
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Jane Rosenthal, Nancy Tenenbaum, Jay Roach, Robert De Niro, Amy Sayres, Shauna Robertson