Meet the Parents

Greg Focker is ready to marry his girlfriend, Pam, but before he pops the question, he must win over her formidable father, humorless former CIA agent Jack Byrnes, at the wedding of Pam's sister. As Greg bends over backward to make a good impression, his visit to the Byrnes home turns into a hilarious series of disasters, and everything that can go wrong does, all under Jack's critical, hawklike gaze.

Meet the Parents landed as one of the funniest mainstream comedies of its year for most critics, who praised the Stiller-De Niro chemistry and the film's knack for wringing laughs from escalating humiliation without resorting to gross-out excess. A vocal minority found it sitcom-thin, arguing that Roach strings together hit-and-miss gags with little connective tissue — and at least one critic noted that the comedy plays better in a crowded theater than at home, where the cruelty lingers and plot holes become harder to ignore.