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After
being engaged for two years, Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and his girlfriend, Pam (Teri
Polo), still haven’t set a date for the wedding—because Greg didn’t want their parents to
meet. But the time has finally come—he’s bringing Pam’s parents, Jack and Dina Byrnes
(Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner), to his parents’ home in Florida for the weekend.
Greg’s reasons for keeping Jack and Dina away soon become painfully
clear. Bernie and Roz Focker (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand) aren’t exactly
normal parents. Bernie is a super-sensitive stay-at-home dad who loves cooking
fondue. Roz is a sex therapist (primarily for senior citizens) who loves to practice
what she preaches (several times a day)—even if it happens to make the guests in her
house feel really uncomfortable. Greg’s free-thinking parents couldn’t be any
less like stern, rigid Jack—who’s still trying to keep Greg from marrying his daughter
and putting a chink in his family chain.
Meet the Fockers pretty
much picks up exactly where Meet the
Parents left off—which isn’t a good thing. I thought Parents was
hilarious—but, by the end, the jokes were getting a little old, and I couldn’t help but
feel a little uncomfortable. That uncomfortable feeling came right back at the beginning
of Fockers, and it just didn’t go away.
Fockers mostly
relies on cheap laughs and old jokes. If you still giggle every time you hear the name
“Gaylord Focker,” and if you think it’s hilarious that anyone would want to be a male
nurse…you might just enjoy this movie. But, for me, the Focker jokes and the male nurse
jokes just got old, and there wasn’t much else. I often found that I knew what was about
to happen, but I just didn’t want to see it. No, I didn’t want to see Greg’s parents
caught in a particularly amorous situation (one involving whipped cream, no less). No, I
really didn’t want to know the story of Greg’s circumcision. And no, I didn’t want to
see how many ways Greg could make a complete fool of himself.
The
casting of this movie was impressive—everyone (especially Streisand, who was surprisingly
outstanding in her role) does a great job with the material they were given. But that
just isn’t enough to make this movie worthwhile. There are still a few laughs, but
they’re pretty cheap. So—as is so often the case with sequels—I recommend that you stick
with Meet the Parents and steer clear of Meet the Fockers.
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