Genre Analysis

Meeting your signifigant other's parents is never an easy task, and when you have parents like Jack (Robert DeNiro) and Dina (Blythe Danner). Gaylord aka Greg (Ben Stiller) has been dating Pam (Teri Polo) for a while and thinks he has definitely found his soul mate and wants to marry her. While in the middle of proposing Pam recieves a phone call from her sister Debroah (Nicole DeHuff) telling her that she had been proposed to and that she was happy that her fiancee had enough respect to ask her dad before he propsed to her. With that in mind Greg wanted to do the same out of respect for Pam's father.

Pam and Greg pack up and travel to attend Pam's sister wedding and for Greg to finally meet Pam's parent's. From the moment Pam and Greg arrived Jack attempts to intimidate Greg in every possible way by questioning his profession (nurse) and even commenting about the color of his car and the list goes on and on. Pam's parents make Pam and Greg sleep and different rooms because they aren't married and does this purposly. Jack has a hidden camera staged in the room watching Greg's every move in the room, major invasion of privacy. Jack stops at nothing to ensure that Greg is respectable enough to be dating his daughter Pam.  Jack even goes as far as giving Greg a lie detector test to ensure that his relationship with Pam has been going the way that it should from his perspective and he asks personal questions to purposely make Greg feel uncomfortable.

Greg does everything possible to prove to Jack and Pam's family that he can be Pam's future husband but all of his attempts seem to back fire some type of way. On several accounts Greg attempts to please the family. Jinnxi, Jacks unusally talented cat goes missing because of Greg and he goes as far as buying a cat that resembles Jinnxi just to please the family. Of course his master plan back fires and leaves the family hating Greg more than ever. Greg seems to have bad luck all together in one particular scence Greg's luggage get lost at the airport so he has to wear some of Pam's younger brother's clothing which happens to have a pipe in the pants pocket that falls out while near Jack. From then on Jack begins to serve hints about smoking marajuana and how it's bad for you, no matter how much Greg attempts to express to Jack that he doesn't smoke Jack dismisses it thinking that Greg is a habitual liar. Greg also accidently breaks Debroah's nose while playing volley ball in the pool and the haterd for Greg continues to grow.
Comedy has alot of differnt influences the first every being brought to films was slapstick comedy that was used in silent films. Verbal absueridy comes with thoughtful humor which is depicted in the scene where Jack and Pam's ex takes a stab at Greg's religion. Greg is Jewish and every one else is Jewish making him extremely uncomfortably with what they both are saying to him. Another example of verbal comedy would be the scene where they all are having breakfast and Jack brings up that Greg is a nurse knowing that Debroah's fiancee is a doctor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETC82KEplac

Sources:

Deniro, Robert, and Ben Stiller, perf. Meet the Parents. 2000. Dreamworks. DVD.

youtube. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Dec. 2011.