To be honest, I was disappointed with “Meet the Fockers.” Most of the jokes and gags are written for folks my parents’ age and older, and this is probably why the film has grossed over $250 million; they don’t make funny movies for adults much anymore. “Meet the Fockers” is funny, but not the hilarious romp I thought it would be. Ben Stiller plays Gaylord Focker, a male nurse and soon to be husband of Pam Byrnes, played by Terri Polo. Greg (as he’s called) is afraid of Pam’s dad, Jack (Robert DeNiro), and spends most of the film trying to conceal a secret from him.
But the movie really starts when Greg’s parents, Bernie and Roz Focker, played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand, receive the Byrnes and Greg into their home for two and a half days of family blending.
Hoffman and Streisand carry this film; their characters’ enthusiasm for life effervesces and bubbles over, especially Greg’s stay-at-home dad, Bernie.
Bernie is a barely containable failed civil-rights attorney and would be radical, and his flower power is still alive and well. Bernie’s built a shrine to his son in the living room full of his eighth, ninth, and tenth place ribbons, and when he’s reunited with his son, he plants seven or eight big passionate kisses on his neck.
Roz Focker is a geriatric sex therapist, and we meet her as she’s teaching a class full of grannies and their studs to do the reverse cowboy on their “exercise mats.”
Robert DeNiro’s character, Jack Byrnes, is a bore, more interested in creating a genius out of his grandson, Jack, than catching Greg Focker in another lie.
I’ll go further; Robert De Niro is washed up. His last great performance was in “Cape Fear,” and after that he’s been running on nostalgia. I suppose it’s fun for some to see DeNiro reprise the paranoid and emotionally stunted Jack Byrnes, but all it did was bring me down.
If you’re over 50, “Meet the Fockers” will have Dr. Pepper shooting out your nose; otherwise save your $7.