Well, I finally got around to seeing 2004’s Meet the
Fockers, a sequel to the amusing Meet the Parents.
My verdict? Absolutely atrocious.
What’s right with this film? Certainly not the Mr. &
Doctor Focker played by Hoffman & Streisand: they are abominable
people. Not Stiller’s Gaylord Focker: he’s a brainless
twit, a simpleton along for the ride. Not Teri Polo’s nonentity
of a fiancée (so forgettable I cannot remember her
character’s name). There’s something wrong when De
Niro’s paranoid, controlling CIA retiree is the most
fully-realised and sympathetic character in the movie.
I think that we’re meant to like the Fockers—but
they’re unlikable. Bernie Focker is a moron who has a shrine
consisting of his son’s ninth- and tenth-place ribbons; he’s
the sort of annoying putz who desperately needs to be punched in the
face for at least half an hour. Roz Focker is, frankly, a disaster.
She, along with her husband, has no concept of appropriateness, nor of
boundaries, nor of discretion, nor of decorum, nor indeed of anything
befitting civilisation whatsoever. They live in the present, ignoring
the past and pretending there’s no future. The two of them have no
wit, no learning; indeed, the only thing separating them from voiceless
beasts is their incessant speaking. My world would have been a better
place had I never been introduced to them.
Indeed, I would have been a happier man had I never seen this film.
If it were possible to induce amnesia, I would. I am poorer and
dumber for having seen it. May God have mercy upon my soul.