Meet the Fockers
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.
