Second time not so funny

Rating: 3/10 (28 April 2005)

Meet the Fockers is the sequel to the wildly popular film made in 2000, Meet the Parents. The sequel includes much of the same cast, as Ben Stiller reprises his role of male nurse, Gaylord "Greg" Focker, and Robert DeNiro once again plays the straight laced, former CIA agent and father-in-law, Jack Byrnes. The premise of the sequel is that after winning over the in-laws, Stiller now has to go through the painful process of introducing his fiancée's family to his own parents, played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand. The conservative, buttoned-up Byrnes family plays the perfect apple to the orange of Hoffman's and Streisand's over tanned, over sexed past-their-prime hippies. Unfortunately, this is about as far as the humor goes.
There are plenty of chuckles to be had as the site gags, physical humor and misunderstandings run rampant. But that same humor that seemed fresh, light and honest in Parents, seems contrived, tired and played out in Fockers. As is prone to happen in a sequel, jokes that worked in the first movie were seemingly regurgitated to fit the new story line. DeNiro's "interrogation" of future son-in-law Stiller seemed clever in the original but more like a cliché in the sequel. Likewise, the jokes about being a male nurse and the humor found in the different ways to pronounce Focker just don't seem the same the second time around.
It's kind of like when a child learns to talk. You expect a baby to well, talk like a baby; and it's cute. But when that child is five and still talking like a baby, it's not that cute anymore. In fact, it's kind of annoying; much like this movie.