If you are born into the world with the name Gaylord Focker, your life is bound to have its share of rough patches. In the slapstick hit “Meet the Parents,” those patches came fast and furious for our hero, played by Ben Stiller, as he met his girlfriend’s folks.
Young Focker, a male nurse, calls himself Greg to mitigate the problem. But when he takes his now-fiance and his prospective in-laws home to meet his own parents, he can’t get away from Gaylord.
| More misses than hits: Sequel to “Meet the Parents”; this time male nurse Focker (Ben Stiller) brings his prospective in-laws home to meet his own parents (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand). Not as funny as the first movie.
Rated: PG-13 rating is for language, subject matter. Now showing: Everett 9, Grand, Marysville 14, Mountlake 9, Stanwood, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12, Cascade |
Therein lies the comedy of “Meet the Fockers,” the poetically titled sequel to the 2000 comedy. This movie has some good yuks in it, but it doesn’t sustain the belly laughs of the original.
Greg and bride-to-be Pam (Teri Polo) plan to introduce her parents, Jack and Dina (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner), to the Fockers during a weekend in Florida at the Focker house. Jack, a paranoid ex-CIA man, is currently baby-sitting his infant nephew, training him to be a super-baby.
The Fockers are Bernie and Roz, played with mucho chutzpah by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand. Where their counterparts are rigid and formal, the Fockers are huggy and sloppy. Roz is a sex therapist for the elderly, a fact Greg does his best to obscure.
Since the first caveman got up and said, “I know you’re out there, I can hear you breathing,” in-law jokes have been with us. This movie proves there is no shortage of them still, although the format is a tad worn after “Meet the Parents.”
The movie saves its biggest humiliations for Greg, of course. His parents have erected a “Wall of Gaylord” in their home, commemorating ninth place ribbons won in various feel-good athletic events.
The funniest sustained sequence has Greg baby-sitting the nephew for an afternoon, which somehow ends up with Jack returning home to find the kid clutching a bottle of rum and watching “Scarface” on TV.
De Niro has a tendency to mug his way through comedies, and this is no different. The big question is how a couple of Oscar-winners, Hoffman and Streisand, are going to fit their way into this goofy world.
Hoffman has his amusing moments, especially in bumping his therapized ways against De Niro’s macho. Streisand, who hasn’t made a movie in seven years, is a disappointment. She has the startled look of the face-lifted, and it’s odd that some of her funniest moments seem to be adapted from Mike Myers’ “Coffee Talk” routine (i.e., Yiddish phrases sprinkled through her conversation).
Director Jay Roach, who also directed “Meet the Parents,” can’t make this into more than a series of up-and-down sketches. Some work, some don’t, but when the movie ends it’s more of a relief than a crescendo.
If you stand back from this film and think about it, it might depress you to ponder Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand flouncing around in a movie about dogs being flushed down toilets.
“Meet the Parents” was funny enough to make you forget this spectacle; “Meet the Fockers” isn’t.
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