Comic Spirit: Meet the Parents

1.      “Meeting the parents” is a very awkward situation. It’s indescribable unless you have been there at some point in you life. You do anything you can to make a good impression and in some cases, you try too hard and things get out of hand. In Greg’s case, things got really out of hand. “Meeting the parents” was exaggerated in the film “Meet the Parents” to express comic effect. The situations that Greg had to undergo were somewhat similar to real life situations but some were more exaggerated to make the film funny.

2.      The two foils in the film that I was able to pick out were Greg and Jack and Greg and Kevin. Jack is a former CIA member and Greg is a nurse. Jack makes fun of Greg for that. Kevin is Pam’s ex-boyfriend and is a very crafty individual and Greg isn’t so talented. Greg feels threatened by Kevin because he feels as though he doesn’t have as much to offer to Pam.

3.      Robert DeNiro’s Jack is both an amalgam of and departure from roles and personas such as boxers, gangsters, and psychopathic taxi drivers because before Jack was a stereotypical father, he was a CIA member. Jack still possesses the traits he acquired in the CIA and he carries them over to his family life.

4.      The film incorporates and explores a socio-cultural juxtaposition because the characters in the film have different cultural values and they all integrate in a social manner.

5.      Kevin adds humor to the frameworks of plot and character dynamics. Kevin proposes a threat to Greg because of his previous relationship with Pam, Greg’s current girlfriend.

6.      My favorite scene from the movie is when Greg pops open the bottle of Champaign and the cork hits the vase of ashes and it falls over and breaks and then the cat pees on the ashes. It was very funny because the odds of that happening were almost slim to none.