Flee the Fockers

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By Roger Moore
The Orlando Sentinel

Posted: December 22, 2004

"Meet the Fockers" is as tacky as its title, as crass as a kid learning his first cuss word.

The surname that was just a throw-away giggle in "Meet the Parents" has become the central joke of a sequel that wallows in lowbrow toilet humor and cheap sexual sight gags.

But there's a zest to the vulgarity. When three Oscar winners and Ben Stiller embrace it, even the crudest of the crude can be a little funny. Too bad that does so much to dull the once-sharp observations about that shared nightmare of putting the future in-laws together for the first time.

If you've ever whispered "Let it go" to a fiance, spouse or parent who was irked beyond endurance by something a future in-law said in a tactless moment, you know that nightmare. In "Meet the Parents," poor Gaylord "Greg" Focker, Jewish male nurse, had to live through a horrific first encounter with his fiance's retired CIA spook dad. Who would want Robert DeNiro as their father-in-law?

"You talkin' to me?"

It's two years later, and Greg and Pam (Teri Polo) are finally about to set a date. First, the WASP Byrnes clan has to travel to meet the South Florida Fockers — dippy ex-lawyer dad (Dustin Hoffman) and chatty mother sex therapist Focker-mom, Roz (Barbra Streisand).

A grim road trip on Daddy Byrnes' new armor-plated RV takes them there. Jack (DeNiro) is babysitting his other child's toddler, a little boy who is the product of the latest child-rearing theories. He's learned infant sign language, is picking up flash-cards and is being taught to "self-comfort" by the Ferber Method. Ignore the kid when he cries. It'll make him tough.

Naturally, that's one of the things that annoys the too-touchy, too-feely Fockers, nurturers from way back. Greg was coddled and cuddled and praised to the point of embarrassment. Dad's even made a shrine to Greg's underachieving childhood.

"I didn't know they gave out ribbons for ninth place," Jack growls.

The women (Blythe Danner returns as Mrs. Burns) bond. The men don't.

Director Jay Roach, working from a multi-writer script, throws his stellar cast into situations to let the sparks fly, and sometimes they do. Despite Greg's efforts to keep Mom's true trade a secret, Roz tilts every conversation, even at dinner, to sex talk.

"What what? We're just being ourselves!"

There's an absurd family football game (somebody could break a hip out there) and an engagement party that has Jack slipping Greg some truth serum to find out his darkest secrets.

But as outlandish as things turn, the only certain laughs are of the leg-humping dog or let's-all-go-to-the-toilet together variety. Roach didn't have enough confidence in the genuine friction of these clashing personalities to let "Meet the Fockers" work.

Hoffman and Streisand throw themselves into this, but DeNiro's Jack is more mean and petty than funny. And Stiller has only a couple of moments that let him do the shtick he does best.

The Fockers are funny in fits and starts. The Byrnes almost never are.

And saddest of all, the only place this holiday comedy is really at home is in the bathroom.