Flee the Fockers

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By Lisa Rose
Newark Star-Ledger

Posted: December 22, 2004

It's been a very long engagement for Greg Focker and Pam Byrnes. Four years have passed since we first encountered the anxious male nurse and his fiancee, as they endured a comically calamitous weekend with the bride's family in "Meet the Parents."

A belated follow-up to the slapstick hit, "Meet the Fockers" chronicles another awkward gathering. This time out, tumult results when the future in-laws convene for a visit.

Despite a cast enhanced with notable players — Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand come on board as the elder Fockers — the movie has few new jokes to tell, offering little more than slight modulations of familiar scenarios.

Like the first film, the sequel depicts unfortunate incidents involving toilet-trained housepets, dinner-table projectiles and fierce athletic competitions. There are some punch lines that aren't recycled from the original, but the film is so repetitious that even the new material starts to feel like old shtick.

The toddler who makes lewd gestures is amusing at first. The effectiveness diminishes, however, as the gag echoes over and over like a wedding band drum loop. Other stabs at low-brow hilarity, like the plastic breasts Robert De Niro's character wears to feed the aforementioned child, don't delight at all.

It's hard to believe such a sluggish piece of entertainment was four years in the making. According to the press materials, director Jay Roach and ensemble were waiting for the right screenplay to come along. If this movie represents the top of the heap, the mind reels pondering what was rejected.

Set two years after "Meet the Parents" left off, the film finds Greg (Ben Stiller) and Pam (Teri Polo) traveling to the Focker homestead in Florida so the couple's families can get acquainted before the nuptials. Although Pam's dad, Jack (De Niro), has allowed Greg into the Byrnes' "circle of trust," he still harbors doubts about his soon-to-be son-in-law. The retired CIA agent wants to assess what the next generation might be like by observing Greg's kin.

Of course, there wouldn't be much of a movie if the families hit if off famously, so what you get is a series of sitcomish squabbles pitting Jewish liberals against conservative Christians.

Greg's dad, Bernie (Hoffman), hugs everything that moves and stages '60s-style sit-ins to express his discontent with situations. Mrs. Focker (Streisand) is a sex therapist whose office is littered with such publications as "The One-Hour Orgasm." They are loving parents who decorate their walls with items like Greg's bar mitzvah tallit and a plaque honoring him as bread-making champion at a Hebrew summer camp.

Just as the name in the title is one vowel away from an obscenity, the movie itself teeters close to an R rating with its chronic blue humor. As far as family viewing goes, the film should be called "Flee the Fockers," since it is flat-out inappropriate for kids.

The first 45 minutes are excruciatingly unfunny, but during the latter half of the movie the pace picks up and the jokes improve. Hoffman is a howl as an old hippie, even if his character is strikingly similar to the gentle guru he played in "I Heart Huckabees." It's his third time working with De Niro — they co-starred in "Wag the Dog" and "Sleepers" — and the acting giants appear to be enjoying the assignment. Streisand mainly seems to be playing herself, with far less charisma than she's delivered in past efforts.

While "Fockers" can't be called the laziest franchise film to hit screens in recent months, it certainly gives the year's most laggard second chapters a run for their creatively deficient money. There are maybe five solid laughs over the course of 106 minutes, a disappointing stat considering the original offered at least triple that number.