Meet The Fockers

Meet The Fockers is what you might call a classic sequel. Not, sadly, in the fine tradition of Henry IV Part Two, the second Godfather film or Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra-vixens, but classic in the same standardised sense as Heinz Ketchup or one of Rod Stewart’s blonde girlfriends. So yes, Robert De Niro’s incomparably anal ex-CIA op is once again glowering amusingly at his prospective son-in-Ben Stiller, suspecting him of everything but genocide. Blythe Danner and Teri Polo keep scolding the Bobster for his intolerance. The cat flushes the toilet and eventually everyone has a change of heart.

Sounds familiar, don’t it? Indeed, if anything surprises here, it’s how little this deviates from Meet The Parents, despite additional sound-alike focking jokes, a bonus subplot which sees De Niro as a doting, hot-housing grandparent and rather expensive star augmentation in the form of Hoffman and Streisand as Stiller’s, you know it, kooky parents.

Though hailed as a casting coup, in practise the pair add little beyond additional glittering letters to the billboards. True, Mr. Hoffman, an actor who gets more enjoyably wacky by the year, seems to be having a whale of a time as a counter-cultural foil for De Niro. But Duchess Streisand, here playing a sex-therapist, is given scandalously little to do besides freaking the audience out with a face lifted enough times to give her the appearance of a permanently startled hairless cat. Shame, for even the most ardent Barbra-hater will usually acknowledge her skills as a comedic actress, and it’s been a while since she troubled herself on our account.

Still, before we start wailing about the problems faced by art in the age of mechanical reproduction and such like, it should be noted that while the almost inevitable law of diminishing returns has indeed kicked in with Fockers, the Meet The Parents template provides durable enough gags to entertain even after regurgitation. Similarly, though we ought to be bored silly by Stiller’s squirming, nearly snivelling stooge routine by now, he’s just too damned charming and idiotic to resist.
Expect the franchise to survive. Just.

120mins. Cert 12a. Opens January 28th.