Plot Summary (Meet the Parents) Meet the Parents (2000)
Greg rehearses a proposal at the Chicago hospital and the trip is sprung on him
Greg Focker, a Chicago male nurse, rehearses a marriage proposal aloud at the bedside of a hospitalized patient while his girlfriend Pam Byrnes — also in scrubs — half-listens at the door.b1 Pam takes a phone call from her mother Dina announcing that her sister Debbie is engaged to Bob Banks and that the wedding will be held that weekend at the Byrnes house in Oyster Bay, Long Island; Pam mentions, in passing, that her father is "old-fashioned" and will expect Greg to ask in person before any proposal.b2 Greg buys the engagement ring from a Chicago jeweler.b3 At the airport, security forces him to check the velvet ring box with his luggage; the airline loses the bag in transit.b4 In the cab to Oyster Bay, Pam reassures him that her father is "the sweetest man in the world"; Greg verbalizes the project to her for the first time and refuses to be talked out of it.b5 b6
Arrival at Oyster Bay establishes the surveillance frame
Jack Byrnes — played by Robert De Niro as a retired CIA officer who has converted his household into a low-grade counterintelligence operation — meets the couple at the door with a handshake held a beat too long.b7 Jinx the Himalayan cat appears immediately. Jack instructs Greg to greet the cat by name, declares Jinx "strictly a house cat," and walks him through an elaborate apparatus that has trained Jinx to use the toilet — though, Jack explains, the cat lacks "opposable thumbs" to lift the seat.b8 A tour of the living room reveals nanny cameras hidden inside household objects, including a teddy bear; Jack warns "we can hide them in anything" and asks Greg, in the same arrival-tour interrogation, "Are you a pothead, Focker?"b9 Greg is shown to Pam's high-school bedroom; Dina invents a Collins-mix errand to get him out of the house. The 72-hour no-sex-under-the-Byrnes-roof rule is delivered later, after dinner, when the household catches Greg in Pam's robe and reassigns him to the den pullout.b10
Family dinner produces the film's most-quoted exchanges
At a candlelit family dinner, Jack asks Greg to say grace despite knowing he is Jewish. Greg improvises a halting prayer that drifts into the lyrics of Stephen Schwartz's "Day by Day" from Godspell.b11 Greg's farm-in-Detroit lie collapses under sustained scrutiny: when Jack asks which animal he milked, Greg answers "a cat," and Jack delivers the line that lives in popular memory — "I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?"b12
The champagne cork shatters the urn holding Jack's mother's ashes
After dinner, Greg uncorks a bottle of $13.95 Mumm's he has bought at the Oyster Bay drugstore as "the most expensive champagne" he could find. The cork ricochets and shatters an urn on the mantel — the urn containing Jack's mother's ashes. Jinx walks across the spilled ashes. Jack, flatly, reads aloud from a book of poetry titled My Mother by Jack Byrnes. Greg's prepared-remarks reflex collapses into Harry Belafonte's "Day-O" delivered as toast.b13 See The Champagne and the Urn.
The polygraph and the circle of trust
Pam reveals upstairs that Kevin Rawley, her wealthy ex-fiancé, will be at the wedding as Bob's best man.b14 The household catches Greg in Pam's robe heading for Pam's room and reassigns him to the den pullout, where Jack delivers the 72-hour rule directly.b15 Lying alone, Greg hears Jack downstairs realize that Pam's married name will be "Pamela Martha Focker."b16 Sleepless, Greg snoops in Jack's basement office and finds a folder marked "Operation Ko Samui"; Jack catches him.b17 Jack straps Greg to an antique polygraph and runs an interrogation about Pam, drugs, and sex under the Byrnes roof.b18 See The Polygraph Scene. The next morning, Pam tells Greg her father was never a flower wholesaler — he was CIA for 34 years and was used to interrogate suspected double agents.b19 In his study, Jack codifies what the visit has actually been: if Greg yearns to be on the inside of what Jack will, from now on, refer to as the Byrnes family circle of trust, he will need to keep certain confidences.b20 See The Circle of Trust Speech.
The disasters stack up
Greg sings an absurd "Jinxy cat" tribute to consolidate his good standing with the cat.b21 He cracks the bedroom window for a cigarette; Jinx — the strictly-house-cat from the arrival beat — slips out.b22 Pam sends Greg upstairs to wake her stoner younger brother Denny — whom Greg has not yet met; on the way out the door to the tux shop, Dina hands Greg "Denny's jacket" against the cold, with a small wooden marijuana pipe in its pocket. At the tux shop, Jack pulls the "sculpture" out of the jacket and identifies it as a marijuana pipe — recalling the earlier "Are you a pothead, Focker?" interrogation.b23b24 The party then crosses to Kevin Rawley's enormous Long Island estate, where Kevin gives the tour and shows the wooden altar he carved by hand from one piece of wood for Bob and Debbie's ceremony.b25 A pool-deck volleyball game ends when Jack heckles "spike those, Focker!" until Greg smashes a ball into Debbie's face at point-blank range and breaks her nose.b26 Back at the Byrnes house Jack catches Greg and Pam in Pam's bedroom and reassigns Greg again — to Debbie's room — then notices the den toilet has been left running overnight.b27 The septic tank overflows and turns the wedding yard into a brown lake. Jack: "Jinx cannot flush the toilet — he doesn't even have thumbs, Focker."b28
The painted cat, the engagement party, the burning altar
With the Byrnes yard ruined, the wedding decamps to Kevin's house. Failing to find Jinx in the neighborhood, Greg buys a stand-in tabby Himalayan from an animal shelter and spray-paints its tail to match Jinx's distinctive markings.b29 See The Painted Cat. Greg presents the painted cat as the real Mr. Jinx; Pam reassures Greg "I was never in love with Kevin."b30 At the engagement party the substitute cat sprays Debbie's wedding dress; Jack notices the painted tail dripping color; Greg, cornered, accuses Jack of running an active CIA operation called "Operation Ko Samui," only for Jack to publicly reveal that Ko Samui is a surprise honeymoon he has arranged in Thailand for Bob and Debbie. Jack ejects Greg from the house.b31 Chasing the real Jinx onto Kevin's roof, Greg drops a cigarette that ignites the wooden altar in the yard below.b32
The airport climax
Denny drives Greg to LaGuardia; at the airline check-in counter the agent reads Greg's full legal name from the form — "Gaylord M. Focker."b33 At the Byrnes house, Pam confronts Jack for being a jerk; Jack reveals he has already called Greg's parents in Detroit and pulled both his MCAT and SAT scores.b34 Jack then runs a CIA flight-ID scan, locates Greg's flight (Atlantic American 27, departing 2:35), and drives to LaGuardia.b35 At the gate Greg refuses to check his oversized carry-on, snaps the word "bomb" within hearing of the flight attendant, and is tackled and processed by airport security.b36 Jack walks into the security holding area "with the family"; the agents release Greg. In the airport corridor, Jack and Greg speak as men for the first time; Jack offers his blessing to propose.b37 See The Airport Climax.
The proposal and the closing camera
Greg returns to the Byrnes house and proposes to Pam in her childhood bedroom while Jack and Dina listen across the hall; Jack and Dina agree they should now meet Greg's parents — the Fockers. The film closes on Jack in his study, reviewing live monitor footage from one of the nanny cameras introduced in the arrival sequence — Greg and Pam in the bedroom — followed by the flush-noise smash cut: "Let's just see if you really can flush the toilet, Jinxy." The apparatus has not retired.b38