Emo Philips served as an associate producer, wrote the film's title theme song (performed by Mary Louise Herrold), and made a cameo as a video store employee.

Filmed on an approximately $30,000-$35,000 budget and shot in and around Chicago in 1991,[1][2] Meet the Parents was not widely distributed and did not earn a large box office profit upon its limited release.

Several years after its release, Universal Pictures purchased the rights to the independent film and hired screenwriter Jim Herzfeld to expand the script.

The man mentions his plans to the owner, who advises him against it, then begins the tale of Greg: an advertising agent from Chicago who met his fiancée Pam's parents, Irv and Kay Burns, in a small town in Indiana for a weekend that ended disastrously.

He breaks Irv's Victrola, overflows the toilet, ruins Kay's roast, rents a film starring Andy Griffith as a rapist and chainsaw killer, nearly stabs Kay’s eye with a fishing pole, gets framed for marijuana planted in his suitcase and a $50 bill missing from Kay's purse, collides with a hit-and-run driver while in the family's car, drowns their dog Bingo after throwing a stick into a lake, and earns the wrath of Pam's ex-boyfriend Lee at a bar when he declines Lee's offer to dance with her.

On the second night, Greg, who has been told to sleep on the living room couch, searches for Pam's bedroom and enters Fay's.

Fay then tells her family Greg entered her room the previous night but claims he wanted to cheat on Pam with her.

[7] In its premier, Meet the Parents was well-received by Dave Kehr of The Chicago Tribune, who called it "a very funny, very original piece of work".

Ayscough predicted that the film "could garner a cult following among anti-establishment urbanites" due to its "blatant attack on marriage, suburban indifference, Christian hypocrisy and the nuclear family" and unsuitability for mainstream audiences.

Opining that the "script desperately needed an objective eye", she concluded by calling the film an "amusing vehicle which aptly displays the multiple talents of Greg Glienna".

Following the 2000 remake of Meet the Parents, Universal Pictures has not allowed him to release the original film in any form of home media.

[1] The screenplay was expanded by screenwriter Jim Herzfeld, and film director Jay Roach was hired to direct the 2000 version of Meet the Parents.