Opinion: Follow-up film 'Fockers' offers laughs, deja vu

“OK,” says Greg, “I left the room for a minute and the baby let himself out of the playpen, crawled across the floor, turned on ‘Scarface’ and glued the bottle of rum to his hands.” Essentially this is true – the cat actually tripped the latch on the playpen – but one can see how the other parties involved might have a hard time swallowing the tale.

Such is the life of Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) whenever he’s around his fiancée’s parents, Jack and Dina Byrnes (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner). The character reminds me of Oliver Wendell Douglas on “Green Acres.” Both are always struggling to do the right thing and both are indeed sane, but things tend to find a way of working in concert against them.

In the first film, Greg goes with his fiancée, Pam (Teri Polo) to spend a weekend with her parents and announce their engagement. Jack, supposedly a horticulturist, is actually a recently retired CIA operative. He’s a straight-laced, button-down, no-nonsense sort of guy who tells Greg, “I’m keeping my eye on you, buddy boy.” Everything that can go wrong does, but in the end, Greg is accepted and even allowed inside what Jack calls “the circle of trust.”

In the new film, it’s time for the Byrnes clan, including Jack’s young grandson, who Jack is conditioning with a strict learning and behavior routine, to meet Greg’s parents.

Instead of flying, at the last minute, Jack decides the family will drive to the Fockers’ home in the Byrnes’ new RV. It’s a behemoth of a vehicle complete with bullet-proof sides and windows. Jack, of course, insists on being called “Captain” when he’s behind the wheel.

Bernie and Roz Focker (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand) could not be any different than Jack Byrnes. Bernie is a lawyer who stopped practicing to be a stay-at-home dad and raise Greg. He decided not to go back to work even after his son had moved away. Roz is a sex therapist who caters to older adults. She’s also written books such as “Is Your Vagina Happy?” and “Meet Your Orgasm!” She has a collection of erotic carvings strewn about her home office.

Greg begs them to just say Bernie’s a lawyer and Roz is a doctor. The couple are quintessential new-age freethinkers and don’t feel they need to keep secrets from anyone, including their soon-to-be in-laws. They keep hardly anything private. In announcing the pride he feels toward his son, Bernie asks, “Can you believe I conceived him with just one testicle? Imagine what he’d have looked like if I had two.” Greg, of course, is mortified.

He’s also embarrassed about the “wall of fame” Bernie has put up with all of Greg’s trophies.

“I didn’t know they gave ribbons for ninth place,” says Jack upon examining the wall. All of the trophies and ribbons are of roughly that same rank.

The biggest problem with “Meet the Fockers” is it seems to be more of a rewrite than a sequel. Many of the jokes and sight gags are recycled. There are the endless references to the Fockers’ last name. Many relatives are mentioned, including Randy and Orney, in an attempt to out-do the fact that Greg’s name is really Gaylord. Dad calls him “Gay” for short. In the first film, the ashes of Jack’s late mother are spilled at dinner. Here, a certain piece of Greg’s anatomy – which Roz has been saving in a scrapbook – winds up in the pot of sizzling fondue oil. In “Parents,” Jack gives Greg a lie detector test, while in “Fockers” he shoots him with truth serum. The stuff is funny, but there’s an odd sense of déjà vu.

The most welcome addition is that of the Fockers themselves. Hoffman and Streisand are great in their roles as old hippies living the relaxed good life. Streisand hasn’t been in a film in a long time and she’s to be admired for growing older gracefully. She has the zoftig look of a Jewish mother, even if here she is a Jewish “earth mother.” And speaking of growing older gracefully, Blythe Danner, who is much underused in this film, at 61, is every bit as classy and luminous on-screen as her daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow, who is a mere 32.

“Meet the Fockers” is not a bad film, has already set box office records for a Christmas opening and will attract everyone who saw “Meet the Parents.” It’s just a bit too much of a recycling job.

On a bizarre note, when the Motion Picture Association of America objected to the title, the producers of the film scoured the country and contacted folks with the last name Focker. These people wrote letters to the MPAA, saying that there were, indeed, many Fockers across the land and found nothing objectionable about the name.