1. Meet The Parents (2000)
Launching a comedy franchise isn’t easy, but Meet the Parents did just that. Starring Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro, it follows a young man who desperately tries to impress his girlfriend’s parents. It’s a chaotic comedy with a number of brilliantly memorable scenes, and it launched Ben Stiller to comedy superstardom.
It’s also a remake of an independent 1992 film of the same name. The original told the same exact story on a much smaller budget, and eight short years later, got the Hollywood treatment. With Stiller and De Niro on board, 2000’s Meet the Parents erased any chance that the original might be remembered.
Unlike some remakes, Meet the Parents didn’t make any huge changes to the original. The story was simply reworked slightly, Hollywood actors were cast to play various roles, and the rest is history. It wasn’t even a matter of time passing, because there’s not even a decade between the two films. The 2000 remake simply had the budget, the stars, and the Hollywood platform to overshadow the film it was based on. It worked, too, because nowadays, no one even remembers that it’s a remake.
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