At The Movies

'Meet The Fockers'

Barbra's back — now can she please make a real movie?

These 30-something lovers are pallid,
banal figures who serve mainly as
straight men for their parents' shenani-
gans.
here is only one thing that
I expected to amuse myself by toting
moviegoers will take with them
up the Jewish in-jokes and asides, but it
from the innocuous and insipid
was slim pickings. And that includes an
sequel Meet the Fockers.
awful bit of business
Barbra Streisand looks fabu-
involving a foreskin I'd like
lous.
to forget.
In fact, a murmur fairly rip-1,
Stiller's vapid Greg, like
pies through the audience
Adam Sandler's nice-guy
when Babs makes her first
chef in Spanglish, is so
appearance, some 20 minutes
assimilated that it's impos-
into the flick.
sible to discern any residual
Playing a Florida sex thera-
Jewish identity. A framed
pist for couples in their 60s
bar mitzvah tallit hangs on
and beyond, Streisand exudes
the wall of fame that
a playfulness and vitality that
Barbra Streisand: She Bernie has built to honor
are irresistible. (The beloved
looks "m a hvelous..”
his son's "accomplishments,
comic Shelley Berman plays
one of her patients, in a cameo we could but one can't imagine Greg wearing it.
Streisand injects the occasional
have lived without.)
Yiddish word into her conversations, but
Alas, Streisand's entrance — eight
by and large the actress sidesteps the
years after her last performance in The
done-to-death Jewish-mother
Mirror Has Two Faces —is the
stereotype. Alas, there isn't
high point of Meet the
much she can do with a cringe-
Fockers, which opened
worthy but blessedly brief
Wednesday.
exchange where Roz instructs the Byrnes
The follow-up to the 2000 comedy
how to pronounce the Hebrew "eh"
Meet the Parents is rife with the farcical
sound.
gags that despoil American comedy
There's also a low moment when Roz
these days: poop jokes, dog and cat
greets Greg with a hug upon his arrival,
antics and a cursing baby.
then declares, "You feel thin. You're not
Filmgoers fleeing family gatherings
eating." Fortunately, my apprehension
this season will find a genial and relent-
that the ground had been laid for a run-
lessly inoffensive situation comedy. They
ning joke involving a force-feeding
may, however, be dismayed by the sight
Jewish mother proved unwarranted.
of iconic actors expending their energies
As part of its strategy to avoid any-
on a script that Billy Wilder would have
thing resembling social commentary that
used to make paper airplanes.
might dampen the proceedings, Meet the
Meet the Fockers is structured as a
Fockers treats intermarriage as a non-
good-humored confrontation between
issue. It may not go down so well in
two equally ridiculous lifestyles. Robert
De Niro and Blythe Danner reprise their Crown Heights or the Bible Belt, but
the ecumenical "can't we all get along
Meet the Parents roles as Jack and Dina
theme is a staple of holiday comedies.
Byrnes, upright and uptight WASPs.
There is pleasure to be gained watch-
Underscoring their Establishment cre-
ing stars such as Streisand, Hoffman and
dentials, Jack is a retired CIA op.
De Niro enjoying themselves without
Enlisted for the sequel, Roz and
losing their dignity. (Hoffman is far
Bernie Focker (Streisand and an equally
more at ease playing off Streisand than
loosey-goosey Dustin Hoffman) are
he was opposite Lily Tomlin earlier this
Jewish exponents of the let-it-all-hang-
year in I Heart Huckabees.) They can't
out school. Effusive, affectionate and
transform pedestrian high jinks into
unabashedly amorous, the Fockers
high comedy, but neither do they dese-
embody the kind of spontaneity and
crate the memory of their extraordinary
chaos that the Byrnes determinedly
roles in the '60s and '70s.
extinguished from their lives decades
Streisand, more than her co-stars, still
ago.
has the authority and brio to give great
The two couples are brought together
performances in major films. Here's
at the Fockers' Florida home by the
hoping she starts getting offered better
impending marriage of their children,
scripts. Li
Greg (Ben Stiller) and Pam (Teri Polo).

MICHAEL FOX
Special to the Jewish News

T

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