Movie Review: Meet the Fockers

Meet the Fockers

Meet the Fockers is, in reality, Meet the Parents 2. Last time, we we got to know the parents of the bride-to-be. This time around, it's the groom's turn.

Meet the Fockers opens some months after the events of Meet the Parents as wedding plans are just getting under way. Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller)—who everyone calls Greg for obvious reasons—is the sensitive nurse who tries too hard. Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo) is his ever patient school teacher fiancée. Pam's parents. who we met in the first movie, are still the upper class and uptight products of suburbia.

Dad Jack (Robert DeNiro) is a retired CIA agent who maintains both the contacts and the mentality of his career. Dina (Blythe Danner) is his wife. Greg and Pam are set to travel with Jack and Dina to meet Greg's parents as well as to set the wedding plans into high gear. Along with Pam's toddler nephew, Jack, the foursome jump into Jack the elder's state-of-the-art RV for a trip to Miami where Greg's Mom and Dad are living. Along the way, Jack spends some time trying to bond with his future son-in-law by welcoming him into the family's "circle of trust" as well as sharing his child-rearing techniques illustrated by his work teaching his young grandson sign language and more. Greg goes along with everything with nervous good humor, but the fun really begins when the group reaches its destination.

From the moment they arrive on the semi-tropical island where the Focker family makes its home, however, a culture clash is inevitable. Greg's father Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) is a lawyer with the mindset of a sixties protestor. His mother, Roz (Barbra Streisand) is a sex therapist specializing in senior citizens. Just as they have their small dog, Moses, as opposed to the Byrnes' toilet-trained cat, Jinx, so are their lifestyle, politics, and attitude the polar opposite of that enjoyed by the Byrnes family. Greg works hard to avoid humiliation (he has to work hard when he has a father who hugs and kisses everyone, including a horrified Jack, and a mother who plainly speaks her mind where sex is concerned). Pam tolerates it all, but when her father discovers still more of Greg's secret past, even she is hard-pressed to maintain her bride-to-be smile.

Meet the Parents was a funny movie. Meet the Fockers, much like Gaylord Focker, tries too hard and as a result isn't as good as the first movie. Ben Stiller is a one-dimensional actor who has perfected the awkward and good-intentioned geek, but who is likely incapable of moving beyond his only character. Teri Polo may or may not be a good actress; in this movie, it's impossible to tell from her limited role as Polyanna...err, Pam. Robert DeNiro, who may be one of the greatest actors of his generation, is sadly beneath himself here. Certainly, he's showed an ability to do comedy, but this movie doesn't give him a lot with which to be funny. Blythe Danner holds her own, but Dustin Hoffman mugs shamelessly—another brilliant actor reduced by virtue of substandard material. In actuality, Barbra Streisand (whose politics and personality I personally find loathsome) is the only person who comes out ahead, here, and far ahead at that. She steals every scene she's in, and while she may have had to work hard to do it, it appears effortless and natural onscreen.

The quality of the acting and the sets are generally okay (don't miss the sculpture's in Roz's home office) in Meet the Fockers, but the direction is farcical and the movie is meant to be at least somewhat realistic; the script works so hard to be funny that it's at its most amusing when it's doing the least (throw-away scenes of the cat and the dog as well as an unheralded appearance by Owen Wilson are highlights). Meet the Fockers is mildly amusing, but it should have been hysterical. I view that as a real loss.

POLITICAL NOTES: The far left leanings of the Fockers are contrasted with the more conservative bent exhibited by the Byrnes. Interestingly, the people who are the most foolish (the Fockers) come across in this movie as the ones who make the most sense and are the happiest accordingly, while the Byrnes are shown to have lost out in life as a result of being worried about such things as trust and national security. Obviously, both ends of the spectrum are exaggerated for effect here, but the correlation between Jack's treatment of the baby and his wife and his career choice are obvious and unflattering. I don't pretend to be fond of intelligence agencies or some of the techniques they use myself, but neither am I so naive as to assume they're not sometimes necessary. If this movie had its way, we'd all be putting flowers in our hair and dancing to island music rather than taking care of business when business needs to be done.

FAMILY SUITABILITY: Meet the Fockers is rated PG-13 for "crude and sexual humor, language and a brief drug reference." Most of the humor will probably amuse the average 12 year-old boy (the titular family surname alone is unsurprisingly the subject of a multitude of jokes), but will likely fall flat for adults (to be fair, Baby Jack's first words almost cancel out the rest of the potty humor). Meet the Fockers isn't the movie you see advertised—the commercials are quite a bit funnier than the movie itself—but I suppose it's okay for those who have nothing better to do on a winter afternoon, including kids of about age 12 and up.