i recently watched meet the parents for the second time with the hope of liking it this time
i kind of didn't mind it the same opinion i had the first time i watched it but the reason i
wanted to rewatch it is to refresh my memory because i hadn't ever seen meet the fockers
and i really wanted to watch it so i basically watched these two back to back and i have to
say this may not be the most popular opinion particularly as i feel like meet the parents
is actually pretty well received i actually preferred meet the fockers so in this one
there will be some spoilers from the first film um this was released a couple of years later in 2004
directed by jay roach uh with a story by jim herzfeld obviously starring ben stiller as uh
our protagonist greg falker we have the cast carrying over from the first film with terry polo
as pam robert de niro as jack and blyth danner as dina and jack and his fiancee pam with her parents
are going to meet greg's parents they are going to make the [ __ ] and brilliant brilliant casting
here bernie [ __ ] played by dustin hoffman barbra streisand plays rosalind [ __ ] and they are very
much the antithesis of the burns rosalin is a sex therapist bernie falker was a stay-at-home
father uh he used to be a successful lawyer but he's a state he was a stay-at-home father
has a much more um i guess relaxed approach to parenting than what jack did with his daughter
needless to say these families these two families are going to have their differences
when they meet the [ __ ] will they be able to get on or does this look like this is not
going to be a union that's going to go down very well there are problems that arise straight away
to begin with the way in which they are getting to the fucker's house is not as expected straight
away you can tell that jack burns is completely in control of this trip and that is something that i
didn't like i mentioned it when i discussed meet the parents jack burns is a character i just don't
like him and i know he's meant to be irritating and robert de niro gave a fantastic performance
but i still don't like him i like him a little bit better in this film because there is some
character development that's carried over and we do get some character development in this film
as well but it's you know it's hit and miss with whether or not i'm going to enjoy him in a scene
or not where's the rest of them everybody i got on well with we also have a new character uh jack who
is well he's called little jack and um he is pam's sister's son so jack and dina's grandson
and he's supposed to be this little prodigy who jack absolutely darts after
and of course putting a baby around the [ __ ] who have very different parenting skills or parenting
philosophies i guess it's going to cause even further complications
so a lot goes wrong for the families a lot could have gone wrong with the film i think if they
try to do certain stories or try to take the narrative in a certain direction but apart
from one very weird thing with a 15 year old boy which i won't explain any further but brilliant
casting there absolutely incredible casting um i think it did all right you know i think
everything that happened made sense the characters reactions and their behaviors flowed quite well
jack actually went along with some things that were necessary more than i thought he
would have done which is mostly the scenes when i kind of enjoyed him as a character
and ultimately i thought it was pretty good and definitely a lot better than the first film
i still didn't find it funny but i feel like they tried less hard to be funny with this film
not that they weren't trying to make it funny but i feel like with the first film a lot of
the humor felt forced with this one it felt more observational a lot more natural which is
my style of comedy so maybe that's why i liked it or liked it more i still don't think it's a
film that i'm ever going to watch again unless i happen to not watch little fockers anytime soon
in which case i might watch this to recap but i do still want to see little fockers and
i just think ben stiller's great and his performance in this is fantastic definitely one of
the reasons to stick with it even if the narrative or the other characters don't necessarily live up
to what you've expected but ultimately meet the fockers may not have been amazing but
it was better than meet the parents and still one that i'm pleased to say that i have watched