Director:  Jay Roach		Released:  December 2004
Writer:  James Herzfeld, John Hamburg		MPAA Rating:  PG-13
Players:  Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Teri Polo, Blythe Danner		Running time:  116 minutes

I guess I'll never understand other people's sense of humor.  Meet the Fockers is funny at times, but it also has a few scenes that are outright duds.  These, of course, are the scenes the crowd laughed at loudest.  In one, a dog gets flushed down a toilet by a cat.  Ha ha.  People howled as if it was the funniest bit ever put to celluloid.  Same deal with the foreskin in the fondue.  Not funny, yet the audience was in an uproar.  Speaking of the stupid dog, he was totally unnecessary.  His running gag was that he likes to hump everything he gets his paws on.  Oh, a horny humping dog, that's original.  So he humps a leg, he humps a puppet, and he humps a cat.  Hardy fucking har.

Like I said, the movie is funny in spots.  Hoffman put together a nice little performance as Mr. Focker, but Streisand seemed like stunt casting as Mrs. Focker.  Like we were supposed to be impressed by her mere presence in the picture.  There's something strange about high powered actors slumming in a low rent comedy.  There's a lot of winking at themselves as if they're thinking, "I can do better, but this is so much fun!"

Early in the story, Stiller and Polo's characters encounter a string of good luck.  That sequence is one of the funniest and sets a good tone for the rest of the film.  But the missing element from Meet the Fockers is not jokes, it's purpose.  While the first film had a solid driving force of Stiller needing to impress Polo's family, there isn't a similar pressing need this time around.  Because really, if the parents of each family don't like each other, so what?  The kids will still marry anyway.

- crocoPuffs

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