Directed by: Jay Roach
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Teri Polo, Owen Wilson, Blythe Danner
Meet the Parents (2000) was a one-joke movie with the joke long exhausted before the movie creaked to an attempted happy ending. Meet the Fockers is slightly better, mostly because Greg Focker's (Stiller) parents join the festivities and both find a way to exasperate Jack (DeNiro) simply by being themselves. Greg's parents are Bernie (Hoffman), a retired lawyer and Roz (Streisand), a sex therapist specializing in senior citizen clients. They are everything the tight-assed Jack is not: Openly affectionate, expressive, and love their son. They even go as far as to build a shrine to him displaying his ninth place ribbons.
In case you forgot, Greg's birth name is Gaylord, or Gay for short. This movie and its predecessor squeezed every drop of humor out of this fact. These movies tend to do that. The Fockers are proud to be who they are. They're surely honest to a fault, specialize in TMI, and Bernie has a habit of using the toilet while Jack takes a shower. But they aren't emotional stiffs like Jack, who Greg is desperately trying to impress and wants to keep his fiancee Pam's (Polo) pregnancy a secret from him.
The trouble with Meet the Fockers is its tendency to take the slapstick road or gross-out humor avenue (a piece of foreskin flies into fondue, for example). This is a sign of desperation. At one point, Greg is injected with truth serum by Jack to get him to spill the beans publicly about a past relationship with the family maid which may have resulted in a son which Greg knew nothing about. The scene unravels, as do many in Meet the Fockers which ultimately wastes some good comic performances in favor of the lowest common denominator.
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