quite funny but not on a level with the first

Rating: 7/10 (30 May 2005)

"Meet the Parents" was one of the best and most commercially successful mainstream comedies of recent years, a hilarious tale of a young man trying his damnedest to impress his prospective father-in-law - an ex-CIA agent with some mighty strange ideas about interpersonal relationships - and being thwarted at every turn.
Now comes the sequel, "Meet the Fockers," in which the young, affianced couple, Greg and Pam, take her parents, Jack and Dina Byrnes, to meet his parents, Bernie and Roz Focker, a pair of freethinking flower children left over from the '60's (she's a psychologist who specializes in sex therapy for geriatrics) who have little in common with the uptight, conservative Jack, a man with a few eccentricities of his own to account for.
One of the reasons why "Meet the Parents" worked so well as a comedy was that, no matter how absurdly preposterous and slapstick-y the scenes became, the humor always remained rooted in a universal, believable premise. We always felt for Greg because we could identify with his predicament. By bringing in this second set of parents, "Meet the Fockers" begins to feel less like a human comedy and more like a strained sitcom, one in which the characters and situations become subordinated to the laughs and all sense of reality flies out the window. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since many of the jokes here are, indeed, very funny, but one still misses the heart that made the original film such a first-rate comic charmer.
That being said, "Meet the Fockers" is still a lot of fun to watch, primarily thanks to the high-caliber cast that has been assembled for the occasion. Joining the original players - Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner - are Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand, two old pros who seem to be having the time of their professional lives plowing full-throttle through this material. The material itself is a bit on the crude side, with lines that are not quite sophisticated or subtle enough to qualify as double entendres. Add to that a few too many jokes about mammary gland function and scenes involving dog humping and you will quickly realize that the writers are aiming for a fairly low common denominator audience here (the title is the first dead give away, I suppose). Nevertheless, some of these bits do actually result in some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, thanks primarily to the caliber of the performances.
No one will be confusing this with Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw, that's for sure, but "Meet the Fockers" offers a fun time for those who prefer their comedy aimed a wee bit lower.