By 2000, Jim Carrey had one of the most impressive runs in movies among most comedic actors. In the 1990s, Carrey starred in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and its sequel, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, as well as The Mask, Batman Forever, The Truman Show, Dumb and Dumber, Man on the Moon, and Liar Liar. There was so much demand for the characters he’d brought to the screen that the studios released follow-up films without him for another decade. Much to everyone’s dismay, it was during that time that we were treated to such forgettable affairs as Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, Son of the Mask, and Ace Ventura Jr.: Pet Detective.
Nevertheless, 2000 was shaping up to be a big year for Carrey as well, however, he created yet another character that someone else would go on to play. Leading up to the millennium, Carrey had been developing a movie with Steven Spielberg called Meet the Parents. Although the movie was based on an earlier film from 1992, Carrey told Larry King in 2008 that the Focker name was something that he’d come up with in a creative meeting. According to director Jay Roach, scheduling problems were to blame for Carrey and Spielberg dropping out.
Before the material was revamped, the original script written by Jim Herzfeld contained a bit more physical comedy, presumably intended for Carrey. For example, Greg Focker’s pursuit of the family cat, Jinx, is much longer than scripted. In a 1997 draft, Focker army crawls through a crawl space under the house, climbs up a tree where he awkwardly catches a glimpse of his future mother-in-law undressing, and subsequently falls out of the same tree while trying to catch the elusive cat. It’s not hard to imagine Carrey pulling off such visual gags with ease.
The lead role would go to Ben Stiller, who previously directed Carrey in 1996’s The Cable Guy. In the end, Meet the Parents was a massive success without Carrey and spawned two sequels (a third is slated for 2026). When Larry King asked Carrey if he was upset about not being in the movie, he told him, “No, not at all.” He went on to say that “it was perfect that Ben Stiller did it. When I saw it, I went, ‘That’s the way it’s supposed to be done.’”
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