Focking Awful

Rating: 1/10 (19 February 2005)

Meeting the Parents of your girlfriend can be stressful enough. But having her parents meet yours can sometimes be a recipe for disaster, something Greg Focker finds to his peril; when both sets of parents meet on the eve of his wedding. Made after the success of Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers carries on where the last film left off, with Greg delivering babies while his stuffy future father in laws delivers ultimatums, both with memorable results. Of course Greg is now finally in "The Circle of Trust" a circle that is headed by Jack, Greg's uptight future father in law, retired from the CIA, yet still firmly attached to his former profession. Meanwhile Greg's own parents are laid back and free with their emotions, his mother being a sex therapist and his father a house husband. Knowing Jack's conservative ways Greg is delighted but terrified at his fiancés news that they are going to have a baby. Worried of Jacks reaction, things get worse when Greg's old teenage crush reappears, along with a 15 year old son who is a dead ringer for Greg and, as far as Jack's concerned, a prime contender for a DNA test . Meet the Fockers is based purely in the realm of a one joke movie (i.e. the family's name) and so has the longevity of one (i.e. very short) The main problems with the film is the heartbreaking (from a film fans point of view) sight of Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand all participating in a film that Benny Hill would have passed at. Streisand, the powerhouse all singing and acting legend, is here reduced to teaching senior citizens how to have better sex, something I could have lived without seeing. Hoffman is clearly having fun, although quite unaware that the audience isn't. His scenes with De Niro have a chemistry, but the scenes themselves do little to their reputations. One scene with Hoffman sitting on a toilet and De Niro in the shower waiting for him to "finish" really felt like an all time low, and when Hoffman flushed I hoped their careers wasn't going down with it. One high point is the appearance of Owen Wilson (Stiller's Hutch to his Starsky) who shows up at the end, but by that time I was too busy sawing through my wrists. Meet the Fockers has an incredible waste of exceptional talent, and that my friends is no laughing matter.