Much ado about very little.

Rating: 6/10 (7 November 2000)

After all the hype and great box office I was really expecting to be wowed by this movie  I was not.
There are some funny lines and good acting by a good cast but over all it felt like a much longer movie than its 107 minute runtime Frankly, I was bored through most of it.
Probably because, even though Ben Stiller did a good job of playing Greg (Gaylord) Focker, I just couldn't relate to him  and it is important for you (the audience) to be able to relate to his situation in order to laugh at the predicament(s) he gets himself into.
At one point Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) asks Greg if he trusts people and then makes the assertion that you can't trust any one.' So basically, Greg should have taken his cue from what Jack said and simply not trusted anyone or the situations that presented themselves to him.
The only real message here is that lying doesn't work and compounding your lies with even more lies will only dig you deeper into a hole.
This is a lesson that Greg doesn't learn until the very end of the movie  and even then you aren't sure he has really learned the lesson.
Blythe Danner is her usual beautiful self and does a good job of playing the too-good-to-be-true' wife of the neurotic Jack.
Owen Wilson, who just did a stellar turn in `Shanghai Noon,' is pretty much unbelievable as the goody-two-shoes that was Pam Byrnes' (Teri Polo) former fiancé. No one is that white-bread.
Teri Polo is not an actress I am familiar with  but I want to see more of her. She was very appealing as the daughter of a wildly dysfunctional family.
This is a movie that you should wait to see at home on video so you can fast forward through the slow parts  you won't miss a thing.