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MEET THE PARENTS:
Male nurse Greg Focker meets his girlfriend's parents before proposing, but her suspicious father is every date's worst nightmare.

Randy Newman's opening song, "A Fool in Love", perfectly sets up the scenario of Meet the Parents: "Show me a man who is gentle and kind and I'll show you a loser". Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is the fool in love. Just as he's about to propose to his girlfriend Pam (Teri Polo), he learns that her sister's fiancé asked their father, Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), for permission to marry. Now he feels the need to do the same thing. When Greg meets Jack, he is so desperate to be liked that he makes up stories and feebly attempts to ingratiate himself with his prospective father-in-law rather than having the courage of his convictions. It doesn't take an elite member of the CIA to see right through Greg, but unfortunately that's precisely what Jack is. Directed by Jay Roach (the Austin Powers films), Meet the Parents is a well-crafted comedy that makes for a pleasant contrast to the sloppy excesses of the Farrelly brothers. Stiller is great at playing up the uncomfortable comedy of errors, balancing just the right amount of selfishness and self-deprecating humour, while De Niro's excels as the intimidating father. Blythe Danner as his wife, the Gracie to De Niro's George Burns, is the true heart of the film and Owen Wilson turns in yet another terrific comic performance as Pam's ex-fiancé.

MEET THE FOCKERS:

Sequel to MEET THE PARENTS. Now that Greg Focker is "in" with his soon-to-be in-laws, it looks like smooth sailing for him and his fiancee, Pam Byrnes. But that's before Pam's parents meet Greg's parents. The free-spirited Fockers and the tightly-wound Byrneses a re woefully mismatched from the start, and no matter how hard Greg and Pam try, there is no bringing their families together.

Meet the Parents found such tremendous success in the chemistry produced by the contrasting personalities of stars Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller that the film's creators went for broke with the same formula again in Meet the Fockers. This time around, Jack and Dina Byrnes (De Niro and Blythe Danner) climb into Jack's new kevlar-lined RV with daughter Pam (Teri Polo), soon-to-be son-in-law Gaylord (Stiller), and Jack's infant grandson from his other daughter for the trip to Florida to meet Gaylord's parents, Bernie and Roz Focker (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand in a casting coup). The potential in-laws are, of course, the opposite of Jack, a pair of randy, touchy-feely fun-lovers. The rest of the movie is pretty much a sitcom: put Bernie and Roz together with Jack, and watch the in-laws clash as Gaylord squirms. As with the original, there is a sense of joy in watching these actors take on their roles with obvious relish, and the Hoffman-Streisand-Stiller triumvirate is likeable enough to draw you in. But the formula doesn't work as well in Fockers mostly because much of the humor is based on two obvious gimmicks: Gaylord Focker's name, and the fact that Streisand's character is a sex therapist. As a result, the movie itself is more contrived and predictable, and a lot less fun than the original. The casting is grand, but one wishes more thought was put into the script.

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