Meet the Parents corrections

In the 'race scene' near the end of the film, just before Greg and Jack go their separate ways, you see Larry (who is sitting next to Greg) say, 'Oh, look, there's Jack. Hey, Jackie,' and he waves. Then it cuts to Jack, who is looking at Greg, and then it goes back to Greg, and in the background you see Larry and he is unfolding a newspaper and starts reading it. Then it goes back to Jack, and then back to Greg, where you see Larry with his hands on the dashboard, looking at Jack. So what was with the newspaper? Where did it come from? How did it disappear so quickly? See more...

Trivia

In the scene where Greg is entering the drug store, listen to the lyrics of the music playing on the speakers - they are very similar to his speech when he says grace in the dinner table scene. Obviously where he got his words from, but not immediately obvious unless you listen for it. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

Meet the Parents (2000) - 26 corrections

Directed by Jay Roach, starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Robert De Niro, Teri Polo (add more)

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

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When everyone first arrives at Kevin's house, Pam says to Greg, "I was sure I told you, Kevin is Bob's best man, this is his place." But Pam didn't know that it was Kevin's house until they arrived there, so she could not have been sure that she had told him. [It's all in how you interpret her turn of words. It is just as likely that she knew they were heading over to Kevin's, even if she herself did not know exactly where it was (and neglected to tell Greg where they were going). In that case, the statement "I was sure I told you" only reflects Kevin being best man, and "this is his place" was added on to explain where they were.]

Corrected by Twotall

Jack shouldn't know that the fake Jinx's tail had to be spray-painted. While he can obviously smell the spray paint, he never saw the fake cat before, so there is no way he could have known that the cat's tail looked different from the real Jinx's. [It is not exactly a difficult conclusion to draw. Jack smelled paint on a strange cat that looked exactly like Jinx, so he naturally concluded that the paint was there to alter its appearance.]

Corrected by Twotall

In the scene when Stiller is on the plane at 2 in the morning, when the stewardess is trying to get him to check the bag, he says (in so many words) that she can try to get the bag from his "Kung Fu grip." Right when he says that, look to the left part of the screen. There is a guy in the back row that has to duck his head because he cracks up. [Is it that hard to believe that when hearing a stranger say something quite funny/absurd they start laughing? I know I have done it many a time.]

Jack accuses Greg of spray-painting the shelter cat's tail to make him look like Mr. Jinx, but there's no way Jack could have known that Greg went to a shelter and found a cat with a white-tipped tail. [I don't quite see how the submitter has linked Jack to somehow knowing about the shelter, as he makes no such mention. Jack found out that the cat was a fake because his neighbour left a message saying that he had Mr. Jinx at his house. When the family gets home and smells the cat it just confirms that Greg brought home some cat and spray painted it.]

Corrected by Lummie

When Kevin is about to show Pam and Greg the wedding altar he made, he pulls a tarp off and states that he just put a fresh coat of lacquer on it that morning. With the wedding coming up, why would he cover it with a tarp and prevent it from drying properly? The tarp couldn't really be for secrecy's sake, as it's doubtful anyone would've gone into that room anyway without Kevin guiding them there. [Just because Kevin doesn't do what the submitter would do is not a mistake. Kevin knew that the family was coming over so the fresh coat he put on could have been much earlier in the day and had plenty of time to dry, plus we don't know whether he did the whole altar or just a small section. As for why he put the tarp on there is two explanations. He wanted to make it a surprise as he asks Pam, Greg and Jack to come and have a look at something. Or the other explanation was he put the tarp on to cover it from dust.]

Corrected by Lummie Time

When the cat first makes an appearance, it is called Dixie. Throughout the rest of the film it is called Mr. Jinks. (There was an old cartoon, The Huckleberry Hound Show, where two mice, Pixie and Dixie, and a cat called Mr. Jinks were featured. This must have been pointed out to the filmmakers during shooting, and they decided to change the cat's name from Dixie to Mr. Jinks.) [When the cat first appears it is called Jinxie. Not Dixie. The cat's name is Mr. Jinks and Jinxie is a nickname.]

In the background in the scene in the airport store room there is a picture in the background which die hard Robert De Niro fans would know is his own; he was a full-time artist until his career took off. [Actually, it was Robert De Niro Sr., Robert's father, who was a contemporary artist and died in 1993.]

In the scene where Greg is on the roof and Jack is speaking Thai, Greg dives to stop Jinx from jumping. Then it shows a wide view and it's normal, but when everyone comes out to see the fire, Greg dives on a little roof that wasn't there before. [When you look at the wide shot, you see that the 'little roof' is above the main part of the house and does not extend to the section of the house where Greg dives and Mr. Jinx falls. The 'little roof' is there the entire time.]

Greg is calling for Jinx in the car, and there is no reason for him to do it because even if the cat could hear him over the sound of the car, the windows are rolled up. [He is not really calling for Jinx, but is merely making the noises as a sort of mantra to make Jinx appear at the right moment. Many people do this, even when looking for inanimate objects.]

Corrected by Twotall

When Greg is leaving to go to the airport, he's wearing what appear to be the same clothes he was wearing when he and Pam first arrived in New York. When he's waiting to board the plane at the airport, his shirt has changed. [He has gotten his suitcase back at this point, and has had plenty of opportunity to change at the airport. There is even a shot of him stuffing his clothes back into the bag while he is waiting (and you never see him take them out, this happens off camera).]

Corrected by Twotall

During the "race" scene, there is a right turn arrow painted on the pavement in Jack's lane at the second stop light. When they pull away, the right turn lane arrow is no longer there. [The right turn arrow is painted farther back in the lane. When they pull away, they don't show enough of the lane to see the arrow.]

In the scene at the dinner table when De Niro asks Greg to say grace, De Niro has an empty plate and his hands on the table. It alternates between shots of the other people at the table and when it shows De Niro again, he is handing Greg a bowl of food, then it goes back to him with an empty plate. [His plate is never empty. It has food on it from the very beginning.]

When Robert De Niro gives Ben Stiller the manual polygraph test at the airport, he uses his thumbs to supposedly take Stiller's pulse to determine whether or not he is telling the truth. However, De Niro should have used his index fingers as thumbs have their own pulse. [Pam mentions that Jack is a human lie detector, so he might just be using the thumbs on the wrist as a way to distract Greg from the stuff he's really looking for.]

When Greg asks the kid behind the counter if they have the Nicorette patches, he says no, and hands him a pack of the Nicorette gum. However, the package to the left of the gum, and possibly to the right, are patches. [Nicorette is gum. The packages on both sides are Nicorette. Nicoderm is the name of the patches.]

In the water volleyball scene at Kevin's you notice that Focker's side is walking around in the pool, but in the background you see a diving board...since when do you dive in three feet of water? [There are pools that can be raised and lowered mechanically. Kevin could have one of these pools.]

Time

When Ben Stiller is getting ready to board his flight back to Chicago, you notice that the computer screen the gate agent is standing directly in front of is not real, you can tell by the red tape stuck to the screen. [It is not entirely clear that it is tape, it could simply be a red background navigation bar across screen.]

When Stiller spikes the ball, it hits Pam's sister on the top of her head but there is blood coming from her nose. [It hits her over the eye and the top of the nose, therefore it's quite possible for her to get a nosebleed.]

When Ben Stiller meets Mr. Jinx on the bathroom while peeing the toilet seat is up, at the end of the movie when De Niro is watching the camera tape records he watches Stiller lifting the seat before peeing. That happened the same night and he never went to the bathroom earlier and Jinxy has no thumbs. [Depends on what kind of seat it is. My cat can easily lift the lid without thumbs.]

At the very last scene, Jack watches the video where Greg is talking to the pictures of his in the den. Greg talks about Danny smoking pot, but why does he know this by then? As far as I'm concerned, Greg only slept ONE night in that den and that was BEFORE he knew Danny. The next night he was already on good terms with Jack so there would've been no reason at all to be mad at him. [In my point of view, De Niro is watching a bunch of tapes from Focker, with Mr. Jinx. That is possible, since when Jack and Gaylord had their final talk at the airport, Jack doesn't allow Focker to sleep in the same room as Pam. So, that tape could be from another day, after he had already met Danny.]

Near the end of the film when Focker is accusing Pam's father of still being in the CIA, he says that he heard him speaking fluent Thai on the phone. How would he have known it was Thai? Having heard that her father spent 19 months in a Viet Cong POW camp, don't you think he would have at least assumed it was Vietnamese he was speaking? [It is not out of this world that Greg recognizes the Thai language. I am an American and can recognize the differences between Thai, Vietnamese, Catonese, and Mandarin. I don't speak any of them.]

Corrected by shortdanzr

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