Meet the Fockers (2004) Review and Rating

Categorized | Movies & TV series

Tags : ben stiller, meet the fockers, meet the parents, movie review, Teri Polo

Meet the Fockers (2004)

Posted on 18 December 2007 by spvn

ReviewColumn's rating :
3 stars

Meet the Fockers When Meet the Parents hit theaters worldwide back in 2000, it met with critical acclaim and practically every movie-goer enjoyed this hilarious comedy directed by Jay Roach. Thus, it was no surprise that he would direct a sequel to the movie, entitled "Meet the Fockers" which eventually came 4 years later after the first film. Unfortunately, Roach failed to win over the critics with this sequel as it got mostly mediocre reviews across the board. However, that doesn't necessarily make this a bad film in my opinion.

In the original film, Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) was about to propose to his girlfriend, Pamela Byrnes (Teri Polo), when he had to stay over at Pam's house over the weekend and endure her parents and family, most importantly of all is her father, Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) who is a former CIA operative and bent on testing Greg to his limit to find out if he's good enough for Pam. As Greg continues to try and impress Jack, the whole movie becomes a hilarious comedy. In the 2004 sequel, it's Jack's turn to go "meet the Fockers" (ie. Greg's parents). Before he meets them, he's pretty confident that there won't be any problems with them, stating "A doctor and a lawyer, what's there to worry about?"

Unfortunately for Jack, it turns out that the Fockers are anything but conventional. Greg's mother, Rozalin (Barbra Streisand), is in fact a sex therapist while his father, Bernard (Dustin Hoffman), actually quit being a lawyer after Greg was born and is now a wild old man who always likes to crack somewhat inappropriate jokes in front of Jack. Initially, there is friction between Jack and Greg's parents since Jack is simply unable to accept their behaviour. However, by the end of the film both parties finally sort out their differences and Greg has finally proven himself worthy of being Pam's husband.

The film remains funny throughout with all actors and actresses delivering perfectly, though that's to be expected with such great talent. While Greg's parents find absolutely nothing wrong with their behaviour, Jack obviously takes offense and Greg keeps trying to smoothen things out by getting his parents to act "normal". All these problems result in absolutely hilarious situations especially with Ben Stiller delivering his role as the main character. For example Greg tries to get his mother to hide the fact that she's a sex therapist and thus has to clean up his mother's office and hide the more "inappropriate" books and statues in it.

However, this film clearly isn't as good as the original "Meet the Parents" was and will unfortunately have to be deemed as one of those usual bad sequels. What went wrong with this film? In my opinion, it's the script. The problem is that all the funny portions of the films seem to stem from only one thing: the difference in characters of the two in-laws. That's it, it seems like all the writers could think of is every single character difference they could squeeze into the script. After awhile, instead of being funny, some might even want to cringe at the jokes because it just gets monotonous.

All in all though, this is far from a bad movie, and still certainly a funny comedy. However it could have been better if the talented cast wasn't wasted on having to act out such a bland script. Still, if you're out there looking for a comedy to watch, Meet the Fockers might be worth the rent.

Click here to buy this DVD
Rate this movie, give us your rating:
1 Star 2 Stars 3 Stars 4 Stars 5 Stars (2 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)
Loading ...