More Ben Stiller Comedy... I Know I've Had My Fill

Rating: 6/10 (28 March 2007)

Gaylord Focker and Pam Byrnes are ready to be married, but first they think their parents ought to meet. Picking up where the first film left off, we now have another set of parents just as quirky as the first, giving us double the insanity. For fans of the first film, this should be a treat!
For me, I'm getting my fill of Ben Stiller. He doesn't seem to really have a lot of range and his style isn't so amazing. What's the last great film he had? I loved "Dodgeball" and his cameos are always nice ("Happy Gilmore", for example) but he seems to play the same guy over and over (Gaylord Focker really isn't much different from the Ben Stiller in "There's Something About Mary").
Also, this film relies almost entirely on potty humor. Some people will really be happy about the humor, whereas I prefer a more witty and sarcastic film. Cats flushing toilets, sexual elderly people, fake breasts. Not my sort of thing, really.
The film was a good pace, so it was easily watchable even if it wasn't my style. And the addition of Dustin Hoffman to the cast was great. Robert DeNiro really runs the plot (I think he overshadows Stiller on many occasions), but Dustin Hoffman is the gem here. (In a recent review for "Stranger Than Fiction", I say much the same thing. But it's true -- Hoffman has a subtlety about him where he blends perfectly into his roles and seems more lifelike than the rest of the cast.)
Barbara Streisand was also nice, which is odd because she's Barbra Streisand. The rest of the cast was unremarkable (though I must give credit to the casting director or whoever found the Jorge character... great job).
If you're into Ben Stiller and/or "Meet The Parents", you'll get something out of this. If you're like me, you probably won't. I watched it because I was visiting my father, otherwise it would never have been on my screen. And I can safely say having seen it I wouldn't have been missing out.