Meet the Parents is one of the funniest movies that I have ever seen. So, needless to say, I've been anxiously anticipating the release of the sequel, Meet the Fockers. Unfortunately, the sequel is nothing like the smart and funny comedy that I fell in love with four years ago. Instead of getting us to laugh through hilariously awkward, yet somehow familiar, situations and issues, this latest movie turns to vulgarity as its primary source of entertainment, as perhaps the title may have foreshadowed. About fifteen to twenty minutes into this movie, several people left the theater in disgust. I should have joined them. Instead, I sat through one of the sorriest excuses for a comedy that I could imagine.
You would think that a 13-year-old wrote the script when I describe for you what it contains: a dog humping a woman's leg, a dog humping a baby toy, a dog humping a cat, old people humping each other, a baby whose first word is a curse word, a man wearing a fake rubber boob, and more. There are lengthy discussions on masturbation, circumcision, and geriatric sex. If you'd enjoy seeing and hearing what I've just described, then maybe this movie is for you. If you think that Saturday Night Live is funnier today than it was years ago, then this movie is for you. If you think that South Park is tame and appropriate, then this movie is for you. However, if you're like me and need a little more than profanity and vulgarity to make you laugh, then let me warn you: this movie is a complete waste of time.
The tagline for the movie is, "And you thought that your parents were embarassing." And that's definitely what they were going for when they cast Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand as Greg's parents, the Fockers. Hoffman as Bernie Focker is a former lawyer who is now a stay-at-home dad while Streisand as Roz Focker is a sex therapist. As such, their house is decorated with some of the most disgusting artwork that you could imagine. When Greg (Ben Stiller) brings home his fiancee (Teri Polo) and her parents (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner) you can imagine the embarassment when Bernie welcomes them with gratuitous kissing and an announcement about the bathroom policy (of which there is only one that works): "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down."
What may sound like a good setup fails on poor execution. The jokes just aren't there this time around and it seems as though everything was forced. A perfect example is how they pushed Owen Wilson into the movie as the same character, Kevin, but this time as the inter-faith minister for Greg and Pam's wedding. It just didn't seem to fit.
In short, after the overwhelming success of the Meet the Parents, we all expected to see a sequel. Unfortunately, however, Meet the Fockers is nothing like the original, because the original was actually funny. I remember hurting from laughing so hard when I saw the first one. But today I don't think I laughed more than once or twice. I just sat there, partly in disgust, partly in boredom, and partly wondering how these two movies with pretty much the same cast and same director (Jay Roach) could be so different. My conclusion is that it must be the switch in writers. Meet the Parents was written by Greg Glienna and Mary Ruth Clarke while Meet the Fockers was apparently written by Bevis and Butthead (John Hamburg and James Herzfeld).
If you are looking for a laugh, rent the original instead and don't bother with this one.
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