Goofs for
Meet the Parents (2000) More at IMDbPro »

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Debbie Byrnes calls her sister, Pam, to tell her that she has just gotten engaged and is going to be married in two weeks. Since the wedding is taking place at home, while this is short notice, it's possible it could have been arranged so quickly. Jack presumably has some experience in pulling together complex operations.
  
  
• Continuity: Position of dirt on Greg's face and clothes around the scene when he's on the roof.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Jack enters the airport a camera is clearly visible in the reflection from the sliding doors.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: The information on the ticket agent's computer display is actually on a decal, and misapplied at that; air bubbles are visible in the upper right corner.
  
  
• Continuity: During the scene in front of the TV, the flowers he gave the parents keep moving around the table.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Greg is trying to get a plane ticket the clicking noises continue even though the ticket agent is clearly not typing (although it's so obvious, it's probably a joke).
  
  
• Continuity: While trying to get his bag into the compartment, a man tries to push past Greg, which causes him to yell "where's the fire?" Annoyed, the passenger sits in the seat in front of him. However, when Greg is being dragged out of the plane you can clearly see the same man sitting in the seats in the terminal, as though he had been there all along.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: At the airport, Jack uses his thumbs to take Greg's pulse. Thumbs cannot be used to take a person's pulse because your own pulse can be felt in your thumbs. Presumably both Greg and Jack would know this, but it could have been a trick to distract Greg from the signs Jack was really reading (sweat, eye contact, etc.).
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Debbie Byrnes appears to have a broken nose when hit by the spiked volleyball. She ends up with a black eye, but this is a common side effect of a broken nose.
  
  
• Plot holes: When Greg jumps back in the house from the roof after setting the backyard on fire, his heel obviously breaks the window and it comes crashing down. This would have lead to an early discovery of the culprit had it been pursued.
  
  
• Continuity: The bow on the top of Greg's gift during the trip to the Byrnes house.
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg stumbles into Jack's office, the lava lamp in the bottom left hand corner of the screen is just warming up (the wax is set in a single column in the liquid). A couple of seconds later, it's working normally, with globs of wax floating up and down.
  
  
• Continuity: On the way to Pam's parents' house, she opens the gift box. This gives the impression that the top and body of the box have been wrapped separately so that you can just open the lid. Later, when Dina opens the package she has to unwrap it like a normal flip-top box.
  
  
• Continuity: Seat belt in the back seat of Greg's car during the race.
  
  
• Continuity: Headrests are clearly missing in both vehicles during the race between Greg and Jack after leaving the restaurant. When they arrive at the house and everyone exits the vehicle to go inside except Greg, a wide camera shot behind the parked vehicles clearly shows a headrest on the driver's seat in the Mercedes Benz which Greg is sitting in.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack is about to read his poem at the dinner table, his reading glasses are on his face instantly. The camera does leave his face for an instant, but paper is heard shuffling the whole time, so he wouldn't have had time to put on glasses.
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg is speaking with Pam for the first time in the movie, the collar of his coat is alternately up and down between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg and Pam are dancing, their arms change position between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: During the scene where Jack is showing Greg and Pam about his new business, the ice and contents of Greg's glass on the table change between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Gregg proposes to Pam, her necklace changes positions after each shot.
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg is accusing Jack of being in the CIA etc, we see Jack take his arm off of Pam's shoulder. When we cut back his arm is back around her shoulder.
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg and Pam are discussing Top Gun (1986) in Greg's room, Greg is wearing a hooded top and Pam wraps her arms around his neck. Pam's arms are on top of the hood, or under the hood, depending on the shot.
  
  
• Continuity: In the airport interrogation scene, the lighted area on the table in front of Greg changes shape between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When presenting the bottle of champagne at dinner, in the first angle, Greg is holding the bottle in his left hand with his right hand around the neck. In the second angle, his hands are reversed.
  
  
• Factual errors: Jack's Thai is so bad that there is no way any Thai person would be able to follow it.
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg enters the kennel to find Mr. Jinx, there is a quick shot of the "imposter cat" and its entire tail is gray. On the next shot of the cat, only the tip of the tail is gray.
  
  
• Continuity: The position of Pam's left arm when she and Greg are dancing at the wedding party.
  
  
• Continuity: The positions of the broken pieces of the urn change between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end of the movie, Jack calls a source and learns that Greg is leaving on flight 27. As Greg attempts to board the plane, a sign above the gate indicates a different, three-digit, flight number.
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg is trying to get on the plane at the end, the flight attendant makes him wait until his row is called when there is clearly no one else waiting to board. But when Greg does board the plane, it is almost full and there are still people coming on behind him.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack is crying about his poem, Pam pats his arm then moves it away to take a sip of wine and puts both hands down on her lap. When we cut back to Jack immediately afterwards, we see Pam moving away from his arm again, even though her hands had been on her lap.
  
  
• Continuity: While Jack explains his new business, the amount of sunlight behind Greg and Pam varies between shots, going from light to dark and back again.
  
  
• Continuity: As Greg accuses Jack of still being a part of the CIA, Pam's hair is parted on the right. A few seconds later, as Greg becomes angry and leaves for the airport, Pam's hair is parted on the left as they go outside.
  
  
• Continuity: Jack watches a tape of Greg in which Greg mentions Denny and hints at Denny's drug use. However, the tape is of Greg's first night at the house. Greg didn't meet Denny until his second day at the house.
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg is on the roof, the camera reveals the cat dangling over Jack's head and the porch is 10 feet or more to the right. Greg drops the cat onto the sidewalk. In the next shot of Greg, he kicks at the gutter, it falls, and Greg drops onto the middle of the porch roof quite a bit to the right.
  
  
• Continuity: Towards the end, Greg is forced to wait his turn to board the plane even when there are no other passenger around him. When he is shown inside the plane there are a lot of passengers both in front of him and behind him.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: During the dinner scene, as Greg presents the cheap bottle of champagne, the mother calls him Rick. The closed captioning even reads as "That is so sweet of you, Rick."
  
  
• Factual errors: Jack's deception revolves around trying to get the passports of Debbie and her fiancé Thai visas for their honeymoon on Koh Samui. Americans don't need a visa to travel to Thailand. They are given 30 days visa-free on entering the country, certainly long enough for a honeymoon.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Greg is on the roof he jumps down and in the window behind him you can see a face looking outside.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack introduces Greg to Mr. Jinx, the cat changes many times between shots (from being a fat/hairy cat to a smaller one).
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg is at the Drug store counter he asks if they have any nicotine patches. He is told that they don't but that they do have the gum. When the guy takes the gum off the shelf, it is next to boxes of Nicorette patches.
  
  
• Factual errors: Contrary to what Jack believes, it is in fact possible for cats to flush toilets with the levers shown in the film.
  
  
• Factual errors: Greg buys a bottle of champagne in the Oyster Bay drug store. In New York State, where the film is set, champagne is not sold in drug stores.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack is on the phone speaking in Thai, he is shown wearing only a long sleeve collared shirt. Greg at this time has the cat by the collar hanging from the house. When the cat lands on the ground, Jack is shown walking into the house with the tails of a tan jacket visible.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the movie when Jack is watching the film to see if Greg really did flush the toilet the nanny cameras around the room comes on depending on where he is. Earlier in the movie Jack said the nanny cameras start taping as soon as they sense any movement. However, when Greg goes into the bathroom the camera switches about a second before he opens the bathroom door
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Jack is known to be a "human lie detector" in the movie, who can tell if someone is lying without the aid of a machine. However, when his son lies to him about the marijuana pipe found in his pocket, he cannot detect the lie.
  
  
• Continuity: When Pam sends Greg to borrow clothes from Denny's room, Denny climbs through the window wearing his gray jacket with the yellow stripe on it. He then takes it off and puts it down somewhere. Denny then hands Greg some clothes and he leaves. As the family comes down the stairs before they all leave, Pam tells Greg to get a jacket because it is cold outside. She then goes to a closet and pulls out Denny's jacket, when Denny's jacket was left in his room upstairs.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Gaylord's MCAT scores are discussed at breakfast, Dr. Banks says "board's a killer" implying that Gaylord took the "boards" and did poorly. The MCAT has nothing to do with the "board" exam. The "board" exam is the USMLE or United States Medical Licensing Exam administered by the NBME or National Board of Medical Examiners and is taken in 3 parts by current and continuing medical students. The MCAT is the Medical College Aptitude Test which can be taken by anyone.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the very first scene, Gaylord is practicing his marriage proposal to a patient. As the camera pans past the heart monitor, the display reads "ECG Lead Fault", which means that one of the ECG electrodes has fallen off or (more likely) that the ECG electrodes were never hooked up to the actor in the first place.
  
  
• Errors in geography: At the end of the movie when Jack is driving to LaGuardia airport the sign above says two exit signs one is exit 7 for LaGuardia and the other is exit 8 for 111 St. For these signs to come up in this order that would mean that Jack would have to be driving from Manhatten, but in the movie he was driving from Long Island so the exit numbers should be going down.
  
  
• Continuity: At the breakfast scene when Greg is in his pajamas, he is talking and holding a bagel in his right hand. One second later, the camera view changes and Greg stands up with a coffee cup in his left hand.
  
  
• Continuity: In the water volleyball scene Greg's team is playing in water no higher than their waists yet there is a diving board directly behind Jacks head when he is serving the ball.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: A shadow of the camera can be seen on Pam's back after she walks by it in a bedroom.
  
  
• Continuity: During the car race, both drivers "rev" their engines at a red light while stopped. Neither seems to be driving a car with a Standard Transmission. One would have to put their car into Neutral in order to rev the engine without the car moving. Neither is seen putting their car into Neutral or switching back to drive.
  
  
• Continuity: Greg's chair changes from being side ways as he stands up to get the wine from the refrigerator and when the shot is shown while Greg is not at the table, the chair is straight.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Pam mentions that Top Gun was a very popular movie when she and Kevin were dating. The movie Top Gun was released in 1986. If Kevin was Pam's fiancée, for how long were Pam and Kevin dating?
  
  
• Continuity: When Greg goes to use the toilet and finds the cat in there, he turns the light on and off and the switch makes a clicking sound but the switch isn't flipped.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Greg is boarding the flight back to Chicago, he is the only one in line and no one appears to be boarding but him. After he boards the plane, many people are there as well.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Greg explains to Jack that "Magic Dragon" refers to smoking marijuana. In fact it refers to smoking opiates. Though he probably knew it and decided to lie to Jack, because he felt mentioning marijuana to him would be bad enough as it is.
  
  

Related Links