A lot of fun if you don't expect too much...

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2004)

It's easy to get expectations too high for this movie, considering that "Meet the Parents" is now considered a modern classic, and this one has Streisand, Hoffman and De Niro, three people who've never made a movie together. (Although Hoffman and De Niro have worked together before, most notably in another comedy, "Wag the Dog.") With that type of pedigree, you'd expect a Best Picture contender, and on that level it disappoints. It's not even as good as the first one, but it's still a lot of fun.
In this one, Stiller, his fiancé and her parents (and their grandson, Little Jack) head to Florida to meet Greg's hippie-ish parents. Being on his home turf should make Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) feel more in control of his surroundings, but guess again as everything begins to spiral out of control for him, thanks partly to his well-meaning parents.
Easily the two scene-stealers are Hoffman and Streisand, who have a lot of fun acting as over-the-top sexually-active and sexually-open parents. This, of course, turns Ben Stiller's parents-to-parents introductory weekend into a Freudian nightmare made worse by control freak Jack Byrnes (De Niro) and his "circle of trust" high standards.
The movie goes further overboard with the toilet jokes this time than the first, something unnecessary considering the on-screen talent who were clearly having a lot of infectious fun making this film. In fact, Streisand clearly hasn't just let herself cut loose this way since her '70s comedies that co-starred Ryan O'Neal, yet she still isn't given enough to do. I could've lived with some scenes running longer if it meant more Barbra and fewer toilet jokes used as unneeded crutches. Hoffman, on the other hand, acts as if he could play Focker's dad forever and you actually find yourself looking forward to seeing him in the next scene.
To sum it up...the movie isn't as great as its pedigree would suggest but it still entertains. Seven out of ten...