Terrific Waste of Talent

Rating: 3/10 (27 January 2014)

MEET THE FOCKERS is a family comedy in which two ill-matched couples meet over a weekend, argue and fight with each other, and then agree in the end to sanction the wedding of their children. A familiar plot, allowing plenty of opportunity for comic situations with a soupçon of sentiment. What is perhaps most remarkable about this film is the not only talent assembled - Robert de Niro, Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller and Blythe Danner - but how director Jay Roach manages to waste it throughout the film's over-stretched 155-minute running time. Yes, it might be fun to watch de Niro hamming it up as a retired CIA officer with an obsession for surveillance; or witness Hoffman overact fearfully as a middle-aged man pretending to be young; or look at Stiller trying and failing to keep the two families on an even keel. But when the film ends up trying to get laughs out of a libidinous chihuahua chasing an aggressive cat, we sense the desperation running through it. The best part about it comes right at the end, when Owen Wilson turns in a cameo as Kevin Rawley, charged with the responsibility of marrying the (un)lucky couple; through eye-work alone he manages to raise more laughs than in the previous 110 or so minutes.