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Meet the Fockers
Directed by Jay Roach
By Cam Lindsay
Meet the Fockers shouldn’t work as a successful sequel. It utilises the same jokes, the same story structure and well, the same risqué and bumbling situations its predecessor relied on. And yet, as a follow-up to a big blockbuster comedy (Meet the Parents) it surprisingly makes enough of the right moves, extending the story, and more importantly, enough of the right jokes to keep it funny.
Two years after Gaylord "Greg" Focker (Ben Stiller) disastrously met his fiancée Pam Byrnes’s (Teri Polo) parents, the two are finally ready to wed. But before any vows are exchanged the in-laws-to-be decide to spend a weekend together, primarily to see if there is a "chink in the chain." The two sets of parents, Jack and Dina Byrnes (Robert DeNiro and Blythe Danner) and Bernie and Roz Focker (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand), are complete opposites, setting up a contrast full of comical opportunities. Jack’s serious, CIA-trained conservatism is a perfect target for Bernie’s free-spirited, publicly affectionate liberalism, while Dina’s wholesome chasteness is no match for Roz’s sexual enlightened personality. Of course, it doesn’t take very long to see that this film, like the original, is focused on the tough love relationship between the clumsy Gaylord and his disapproving nemesis Jack.
Stiller is again the butt of most of the jokes, falling victim to his parents’ embarrassing stories of his youth (including an amusing revelation of his deflowering by the housekeeper), Jack’s investigative methods (revealing a possible illegitimate son, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Stiller) and his own foolish mistakes (a number made during his stab at babysitting). The only real complaints are the exhausting use of a baby (Jack and Dina’s grandson) for a number of unfunny jokes and the film’s weak ending, which sees the Byrnes’ being "Fockerised" and making a complete 180 in their manners.
Meet the Fockers is certainly not the smartest comedy of the year and it’s sure to be panned by stern critics for its likeness to Meet the Parents. But the story is a satisfying continuation that was bound to keep going (and bound to carry on even further from here — can you say Meet the Little Focker?) and for those who don’t take themselves too seriously and enjoy seeing a superb cast of famous faces act their way out of difficult situations, it’s a gas. (Universal)
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Primer - Dir. by Shane Carruth
Though it’s by now tedious to report on the low budgets of debut indies, there’s no denying the gulf between what $7,000 ought to buy you and what it’s bought Shane Carruth’s Primer. A student of ’70s paranoia film, as well as a refugee from the engineering field, Carruth’s taken his passion and his milieu and made something surprisingly accomplished: an industrial horror film that’s stylish and to the point in rendering white-collar ambition and the lengths to which it drives us.
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The Aviator - Dir. by Martin Scorsese
Howard Hughes may have been crazy, but, as we learn through Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, he was also fascinating. Though Hughes was eccentric, his nuttiness came in differing degrees: the director/producer/aviator is most famous for being obsessive-compulsive and germ phobic, illnesses that led him to lock himself in a room, naked, collecting his urine in milk bottles. But what Scorsese shows us through Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of Hughes is that he was also a risk-taking engineering genius who created some significant developments in airplane design history.
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A Very Long Engagement - Dir. by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
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Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom Of The Opera - Dir. by Joel Schumacher
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Are We There Yet? - Dir. by Brian Levant
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Assault on Precinct 13 - Dir. by Jean-François Richet
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Beyond The Sea - Dir. by Kevin Spacey
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Blade: Trinity - Dir. by David S. Goyer
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Closer - Dir. by Mike Nichols
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Coach Carter - Dir. by Thomas Carter
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Elektra - Dir. by Rob Bowman
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Fat Albert - Dir. by Joel Zwick
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Hotel Rwanda - Dir. by Terry George
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In Good Company - Dir. by Paul Weitz
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Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events - Dir. by Brad Silberling
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Lightning In A Bottle - Dir. by Antoine Fuqua
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Million Dollar Baby - Dir. by Clint Eastwood
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Ocean's Twelve - Dir. by Steven Soderbergh
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Red Lights - Dir. by Cedric Kahn
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Son Frère (His Brother) - Dir. by Patrice Chéreau
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Spanglish - Dir. by James L. Brooks
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The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Dir. by Wes Anderson
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The Merchant of Venice - Dir. by Michael Radford
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Before the release of 2009's Veckatimest, Grizzly Bear stood at a career watershed of sorts. Critical darlings without much mainstream success, they could very well have continued in the direction set with 2007's Friend EP and become perennial indie overachievers, in the vein of the Li...
Full Review
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