It chronicles a series of unfortunate events that befall a good-hearted but hapless nurse (Ben Stiller as Greg Focker) while visiting his girlfriend's parents (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner as Jack and Dina Byrnes).

Greg Focker, a Jewish American nurse living in Chicago, intends to propose to his girlfriend, daycare teacher Pam Byrnes.

He chooses to get her father's blessing at her sister Debbie's wedding at their parents' house on Long Island, and plans to propose to her in front of her family.

Greg accidentally injures Debbie during a pool volleyball game, floods the backyard with sewage, breaks an urn containing the ashes of Jack's mother, and sets the wedding altar on fire.

Later, Greg loses Jinx, so temporarily replaces him with a near-identical stray, whose tail he spray-paints and who makes a mess of the house and destroys Debbie's wedding dress.

Jack accuses Greg of lying about taking the Medical College Admission Test because his CIA contacts could not find any record of a Gregory Focker.

Greg Focker is a middle-class Jewish nurse whose social and cultural position is juxtaposed against the Byrnes family of upper-middle class White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

[3][4] With respect to Greg as a Jew and a nurse when compared to the Byrnes and Banks families, a distinct cultural gap is created and subsequently widened.

She noted that the social gap is further widened next morning when Greg is the last person to arrive at the breakfast table; he shows up wearing pajamas while everyone else is fully clothed.

In their book Men in Nursing: History, Challenges, and Opportunities authors Chad O'Lynn and Russell Tranbarger present this as an example of a negative portrayal.

[25] Universal's reluctance to give the project to Roach was also due to new interest from Steven Spielberg who wanted to direct and produce the film with Jim Carrey playing the role of Greg Focker.

[25] His character is 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.

[28] Admitting that he had initial reservations about starring in the film, he said that he felt "pushed into it" due to insistence by Jane Rosenthal—De Niro's partner in TriBeCa Productions who also acted as one of the producers.

[28] Screenwriter Jim Herzfeld and director Jay Roach both confirmed that, after committing to the project and reviewing the script, De Niro was actually the person who came up with the idea for the famous polygraph test scene.

"[25] Additionally, Roach was impressed with Stiller's creative and ad lib abilities stating that "he has lots of great ideas and he's very skilled at loose improvisation.

[36] The American Humane Association oversaw the filming of all scenes where the cats were used and ensured the animals' obedience and well-being by keeping two trainers and a veterinarian on set at all times.

The name was written into the script after Jim Carrey came up with the idea for the Focker surname during a creative session held before he abandoned the project.

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.

Both versions contain three additional featurettes: Silly Cat Tricks, The Truth About Lying and a 12-minute-long Jay Roach: A Director's Profile.

"[68] "Making a funny but not mean, smart but not smug, broad but not lazy ensemble comedy about contemporary people in a realistic setting is hard.

For which Meet the Parents is to be commended — it's a bouncy, loose-limbed, families-do-the-darnedest-things sitcom that elicits ungrudging laughs without invoking water boys, pet detectives, or Klumps."

The website's consensus reads: "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.

"[23] 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.

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 cast because he believed that they "understand that palpable reality will always trump frenzied fantasy when it comes to getting laughs."

[87] Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine called the film "flat-out hilarious"[88] 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.

"[90] 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.

stated that "perhaps in the crowded theater the film is hysterical, but in the quieter venue of home video, it just seems sadistic, and as the humor evaporates, the holes in the plot become clearer.

[102][103] Directed again by Jay Roach with a screenplay by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg, it 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.