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For more movie summaries, see Kam's Kapsules.
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Meet the Fockers: Pointless Sequel Relies on Risqué and Scatological Humor
Review by Kam Williams
Four years ago, the film Meet the Parents introduced us to hapless Gaylord "Greg" Focker (Ben Stiller), an awkward male nurse who accompanied his fiancée, Pam (Teri Polo), home for a weekend in order to ask her folks, Dina (Blythe Danner) and Jack (Robert De Niro) Byrnes, for their daughter's hand in marriage. However, Greg found it impossible to please Dina's dad, a hard-boiled, suspicious, overprotective, former CIA agent.
That madcap adventure focused narrowly on the interplay between Greg and Jack over the course of a weekend when the clumsy suitor set off a destructive chain of events which almost wrecked the house. The family cat was spray painted, the sewage system flooded, the yard was set on fire, and so forth.
Meet the Fockers, in comparison, is a scattered collection of off color wisecracks, pratfalls, and crude bathroom humor which never hits the mark. The sequel stoops to distracting devices involving pets, a servant, a precocious infant, and a sadistic Southern cop.
Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as Greg's parents, Bernie and Roz, may be playing the most embarrassing roles of their careers. They play a carefree bohemian couple whose every lewd and licentious move shocks the staid Byrnes.
The story starts with Jack driving the family to Florida in an R.V. for a get acquainted weekend with Greg's parents, a doctor and a lawyer. He soon learns that attorney Bernie is a sex starved house-husband who hasn't practiced law in years and that Roz is a sex therapist with a thriving practice.
The plot thickens when an attractive female Cuban caterer shows up with a son who bears an uncanny resemblance to Greg. Bernie announces that the caterer took his son's virginity when he was a teenager.
Jack injects his future son-in-law with truth serum to get to the bottom of the matter. Greg reveals not only that affair, but a whole lot more of what is on his mind. Unfortunately, this plot twist, which reveals Greg's alter ego, falls flat.
That's the least of the movie's failings. It is a slapdash mishmash where nothing works, which means there's no reason to rendezvous with these Fockers.
Fair (one star). Rated PG-13 for crude, off-color humor, profanity, and a drug reference. Running time: 114 minutes. Distributor: Universal.
end of review.
For more movie summaries, see Kam's Kapsules.