‘Meet the Fockers’: One big, happy family? Hah!

The pleasures of “Meet the Fockers” are many and varied, and they’re not confined to the movie. Not to be underestimated is the cheap thrill of tossing the title into a sentence at every possible opportunity. “Sorry, can’t have dinner, going to see ‘The Fockers’ ” and “Oh, my goodness, I’m running late for ‘The Fockers’ ” and “Sorry, officer, I was just trying to get to ‘The Fockers’ on time.” See what I mean? The fun never ends.

“Meet the Fockers” is the sequel to the 2000 hit “Meet the Parents,” which starred Ben Stiller as Greg (ne Gaylord) Focker, RN, a mild-mannered nurse who plans to propose to his girlfriend, Pam (Teri Polo), while spending the weekend at her parents’ house in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Unfortunately, while Pam’s gracious mother, Dina (Blythe Danner), welcomes the unimpressive Greg with open arms, her father, Jack (Robert De Niro) -- who is not, in fact, the lovable florist Pam described but a former CIA operative, surveillance enthusiast and psycho-prig -- despises him on sight. Over the course of the weekend, Greg nearly burns down the house and practically ruins Jack’s other daughter’s wedding to a better man than he. Nonetheless, “Meet the Parents” concludes with his engagement to Pam and his tenuous inclusion into what Jack calls “the Byrnes family circle of trust.”

Two years later, Greg is finally ready to chuck that trust out the window by introducing Jack and Dina to his own parents, Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) and Roz (Barbra Streisand) Focker, who have been described to Jack as a respectable doctor and a lawyer living in Florida. The outgoing message on their answering machine tells a different story -- a disgusting story about chimichangas and their intestinal consequences, as a matter of fact. Clearly, Bernie Focker is not the fastidious man Jack Byrnes is; and Jack’s treasured possessions (this time it’s a Kevlar-reinforced RV he calls “the highlight of our twilight”) and best-laid plans (for early genius training of his infant grandson, Little Jack) are once again headed for trouble.

“Meet the Parents” was one of those movies that was funnier in retrospect, once your standards had found their level, than it was in the moment. Luckily for “Meet the Fockers,” viewer expectations should be perfectly calibrated upon entering the theater. For one thing, it’s one of those rare sequels that practically demanded to be made to restore some kind of balance in the universe. Greg’s humiliation at the hands of Pam’s family, friends, ex-boyfriend and childhood pet in the first movie -- though it continues unabated here, naturally -- was too unilateral, too categorical in its rejection not to require some type of payback. “Meet the Fockers” redresses the imbalance by this time letting Greg be tortured by his own family, friends and idiotic pet.

But as the title suggests, “Meet the Fockers” belongs to Bernie and Roz, though without the ballast of the uptight Jack, they’d be just a pair of weirdos in a vacuum. Greg didn’t exactly lie about his parents, but he did make some crucial omissions. Roz is a sex therapist specializing in senior sexuality; Bernie is a former litigator who quit when Greg was born to become a stay-at-home-dad. He’s also the kind of guy who will kiss a man he’s just met square on the neck after a vigorous 20 minutes of Capoeira, the Brazilian art of martial dance; erect a shrine, the “Wall of Gaylord,” to his son’s humiliatingly mediocre achievements; and share all sorts of information about his privates while still on the first cocktail.

The mirror image of its predecessor, “Meet the Fockers” pits the uber-WASPy, conservative Jack against the lefty-loosey Jewish Fockers -- though Jack would have suffered just as mightily at the hands of any ethnic minority turned up full volume, Hollywood style. (The Cuban housekeeper makes Charo look like Garbo.) “Meet the Fockers” tweaks the old movie saw that it’s the “ethnic peoples” who really know how to live, love, laugh, learn -- all the Ls, basically. (For more information on this, see “Spanglish.”) If you felt like getting theoretical about it, you could say “Meet the Fockers” explores issues of panic in the archetypal other and discovers that both sides are right to panic.

“Meet the Fockers” is also one of those relatively rare comedies that’s at once puerile, charming and very funny throughout. Stiller dutifully reprises his nervous routine, and Polo does what she can in a criminally bland part. Hoffman and Streisand have a blast as Bernie and Roz, the unself-conscious free spirits who made their son into the cringing milksop he is today. It’s been a long time since Streisand played a role this loose and uninhibited. Here, she’s the barrier-free Jewish mom who thinks nothing of grilling her son about his sex life. But Hoffman, whom director Jay Roach has said inspired the role of Bernie, is the real Jewish mother, exploding with embarrassing pride over his son’s 10th-place ribbons, commending the effort over that “macho-wacho” competitive stuff.

Jack is so obsessed with coaching Little Jack in baby sign language and keeping him to a strict napping schedule in order to “Ferberize” him that he completely neglects Dina, whereas Bernie and Roz take cowboy hats and cans of whipped cream to bed and try to “Fockerize” Jack. All in all, Jack’s situation is not unlike that of Jack Nicholson in “About Schmidt” -- he’s got the RV, the daughter’s wedding to a guy he’s not crazy about, the bad back, the overly touchy-feely in-laws. But “Meet the Fockers” skips the poignant moments and goes for the Chihuahua-in-the-toilet jokes every time. It’s toilet humor at its finest.

*

‘Meet the Fockers’

MPAA rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and a brief drug reference

Times guidelines: Crass, tasteless and obsessed with the usual scatological stuff, but more good-natured and well-meaning than most.

Ben Stiller...Greg Focker

Teri Polo...Pam Byrnes-Focker

Robert De Niro...Jack Byrnes

Blythe Danner...Dina Byrnes

Barbra Streisand...Roz Focker

Dustin Hoffman...Bernie Focker

Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures present A Tribeca / Everyman Pictures production. Executive producers Amy Sayres, Nancy Tenenbaum. Produced by Jane Rosenthal, Robert DeNiro, Jay Roach. Story by Jim Herzfeld and Marc Hyman. Screenplay by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg. Based on characters created by Greg Glienna & Mary Ruth Clarke. Directed by Jay Roach. Director of photography John Schwartzman, ASC. Production designer Rusty Smith. Edited by Jon Poll, Lee Haxall. Costume designer Carol Ramsey. Co-producer Jon Poll. Associate producer Larry Stucky. Original songs written and performed by Randy Newman. Music by Randy Newman. Art director Andrew Neskoromney. 115 minutes.

In general release.