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...but I just want to see DeNiro return to his hard-hitting ways and to stop crying like a little bitch.  So, when I went to a free movie in San Diego tonight and the lady announced we were going to see Meet the Fockers, I sighed and tried to hope for the best. So here goes the review.

The quick premise: The characters from the first movie go down to Florida to meet, well, the Fockers. There you go. Everyone's back: Stiller, DeNiro, Teri Polo, and Blythe Danner. The Fockers are played by Dustin Hoffman and, my mother's favorite, Barbra Streisand.

The movie does its job. Very well. The audience I was with was dying. Just cracking up at the sheer insanity and at the mischief and the mayhem. Howls when Jinxy, the cat, flushed the Focker's dog (Moses) down the toilet! Giant guffaws when Greg's foreskin got dropped in a pot of fondue! Uproarious laughter at DeNiro showing off his new device, a "man-ary gland" to feed his grandson! People choking on their popcorn as Greg has a babysitting nightmare when the baby starts watching Scarface while holding onto a bottle of rum! And so on! But these were the easy comic setpieces. Those are precisely what bugged me about the first movie. Don't get me wrong, my dad still cracks up when he thinks about Jinx peeing in the spilled ashes. But those moments actually made me cringe in discomfort.

So, if you liked the big jokes in Meet the Parents, you'll most certainly be rewarded here. But I liked the characters. I liked watching DeNiro fucking around with Stiller. I liked the relationships and how the comedy developed out of them. It's easy to replicate comedic moments by taking the same beats and just giving them different context. It's not easy to bring comedy out of characters. That takes a little more skill. At least I gleaned that from the first half of the screenwriting book I read (the only half I read, actually). But that's why I think this movie actually worked.

Everyone really seems to be having fun with their characters here. Ben Stiller actually tones down his act and brings a little humanity to his character who repeatedly gets the shit end of the stick. Teri Polo, well, she's fine. She doesn't really do much, does she? DeNiro is having a blast and, despite my desire to see him in another Scorsese movie, I gotta give him credit for having great comic timing. Blythe Danner is dreamy. Yeah, I'll say it. She's kinda sexy and I have a bit of a thing for her. She's just luminescent. Gwyneth has some goooood genes. And she's charming as the slightly repressed woman who brings balance to DeNiro. Dustin Hoffman doesn't give a half-assed performance in what could have been an over-the-top role. He embraces the idiosyncrasies of his character (a lawyer who retired to raise Greg and enjoys his faux-tropical lifestyle in Florida) and makes for a strong counterpoint to DeNiro. And then there's Barbra. The one thing that could bring the whooooole thing down. And she doesn't. Aside from thinking "uh-oh, heeeere we go " when she came on the screen, I didn't think of her as 'Babs' again. She plays a sex therapist for the elderly. And, while I refuse to think of sex and Barbra Streisand at the same time, she works it! No signs of Yentl here she's straight up comedy. When she's giving DeNiro a massage, her hand slips a little low and she quietly says, "Oops Found some driftwood." Well, that killed me. Here's a public statement I thought I'd never make: Mom, Babs is a-okay. Whew that wasn't easy.

Is this movie high-comedy? No. But is it a nice time at the movies? Yes. It's easy and it's really entertaining. Face it, we'll all be watching this with our families at the holidays. What else can everybody see and get a laugh out of? And, by 2006, when our families and friends have made us see it about 4 or 5 times in the theater, on DVD, and on cable, then we'll be sick of it just like we are of the first one. The circle of life, folks.

- Jake (Not The Fatman)

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