Meet the Fockers

by Matt Parks

A sequel to the 2000’s over esteemed ‘Meet the Parents,’ ‘Meet the Fockers’ is a sporadically amusing rehash of the earlier film. Having (after much humiliation) finally earned a place in his future in-laws the Byrnes’ “circle of trust,” piteous male nurse Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller) now faces relationship Armageddon—introducing the Byrnes’ to his own parents (Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand).

The movie spends a few minutes trying to establish a plot, but quickly boils down to a series of set pieces evoking the clash of culture between fathers—suburban WASPy ex-CIA automaton Jack Byrnes (Robert Deniro) vs. the elder Focker, a liberal Jewish lawyer who quit his job to raise Gaylord as a stay-at-home dad, and who now lives with his sex therapist wife in a remote part of the Florida Coast they’ve christened Focker Isle—with Gaylord reduced to bumbling through the background.

Though this time out, there’s never any doubt where it’s all going to end up, Deniro and Hoffman make admirable efforts to enliven a film (Hoffman’s performance is the only thing to recommend in this film) packed with jokes seem to have been compiled from snippets of a desk drawer full of unproduced scripts.

Stiller, reduced to a supporting role for the second film, also manages a couple of very funny scenes. Ultimately, though, ‘Meet the Fockers’ relies on the one-joke premise implied in its title. It’s was funny as a detail in the original, but it doesn’t really work here as a central motif.