Meet The Fockers is the sequel -- did we need one? -- to the 2000 comedy, Meet The Parents.
You are forgiven for wondering how many laughs can be squeezed out of the surname "Focker". Thanks to an ensemble cast that includes Robert De Niro, Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman, Meet The Fockers is much more fun than anticipated.
Ben Stiller and Teri Polo resume their roles as the future bride and groom. The time has come for his folks to meet her folks.
As introduced in Meet The Parents, her folks are played by Blythe Danner and De Niro, with the latter as a grim, macho, former CIA operative.
Stiller's parents, on the other hand, are flakes. His mom (Streisand) is a sex therapist, and his dad (Hoffman) is a lawyer who became a stay-at-home parent.
Once both sets of parents are together, the plot is mostly just De Niro's strict, humourless behaviour vs. Hoffman's huggy-bear, hippie parent routine.
To their credit, both Hoffman and Streisand jump into the physical comedy with such gusto that Meet The Fockers gets hoisted a notch on the comedy scale.
And despite the ad with the dog in the toilet -- really screams "stay away!! doesn't it? -- the movie has its share of grown-up laughs. The humour here is as low-end as the genre permits, but with an adult twist, as a lot of the jokes in Meet The Fockers are based on child-rearing.
De Niro has taken over the education of an infant grandson, for example, which provides the sort of laugh you'd expect. Cute baby faces. Cute mishaps. The baby saying his first word (rhymes with pass-hole).
And then there are the child-rearing laughs based around how Streisand and Hoffman raised their son.
Think: Preserved foreskins. Stupid trophies. A teen love affair with the maid (Alanna Ubach in a brilliant cameo). Maybe you had to be there.
And maybe you should be.
(This film is rated PG.)
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