(2004) As wacky as a fake boob dispensing the milk of new-age openness, director Jay Roach's follow-up to Meet the Parents brings together the Byrneses and the Fockers in Florida in advance of Pam (Teri Polo) and Greg's (Ben Stiller) October wedding, six months hence. Randy Newman composed the music and performed two songs.

Pam's parents Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), a retired CIA agent who continues using a cover as a florist, and wife Dina (Blythe Danner) are taking care of their other daughter's Little Jack, who hasn't spoken his first word yet. With their future son-in-law Greg, a male registered nurse, also onboard, Jack (Dina calls him Muskrat) drives his high-tech RV motorhome to Miami.

Ferberizing his prodigy LJ - communicating by sign language, avoiding infantilizing the child with babytalk or inappropriate toys, and practicing "self-soothing" by ignoring LJ when he's crying - Jack also nurses his grandson, employing his invention of the Mannary Gland, a "life-like latex left breast" that he straps onto his chest, dispensing the mother's breast milk.

Out on an island they arrive at Greg's parents' home. Retired lawyer Bernie Focker (Dustin Hoffman), who became a stay-at-home dad when their only child Gaylord was born 36 years back, and Roz (Barbra Streisand), a sex therapist, greet their son and his bride-to-be with a celebratory exhibition of hugs and kisses, while Jack remains standoffish to such excessive emotional displays.

Hoping his folks won't embarrass him (thus denying him entrance into the circle of trust) in front of straitlaced Jack, Greg asks his uninhibited, unorthodox Jewish parents not to be themselves for a few days. "Why should we diminish our joy," asks Bernie, "just because they're in denial?"

With a water shortage and only one functional bathroom in the old house, Bernie explains the procedure for flushing the toilet: If it's yellow, it's mellow; if it's brown, flush it down. Jack insists on sleeping in his hotel on wheels - "If they want to sleep in a trailer," says Roz - until the Fockers' midget dog Moses (who tries to hump everything that moves, including the Byrneses' cat Mr Jinx) gets flushed down the RV's toilet.

When Pam confesses to Greg she's pregnant, he expresses anxiety: "I hate the idea of keeping secrets from your dad." He then suggests that they announce a change in plans to move the wedding up to June, the next month. Roz, however, has already recognized Pam's condition along with her father's state of denial, believing his daughter's still a virgin; she takes it upon herself to educate Dina (the last time Jack gave her anything in bed was on their anniversary) in the arts of seduction while trying to unloosen Jack (a bodywork session for his sciatic back) from his tight coil.

During their first dinner together Greg's scrapbook (there's also a "Wall of Gaylord" as a kind of shrine to all of Greg's accomplishments) draws attention to his baby teeth and circumcised foreskin from his "tiny turtle"; also the Fockers' former housekeeper, buxom Isabel, who has come over to prepare the meal, attracts LJ's interest in her endowments, while Bernie and Roz reveal that with her tutoring Greg at 19 finally lost his virginity.

Jack sets up a surveillance camera in the house; and when he meets Isabel's 15-year-old son Jorge Villalobos, he suspects (and collects DNA samples for a paternity match) the teenager to be the fruit of Greg's loins. After leaving LJ alone with Greg while Jack (having given strict orders not to indulge LJ) and the others go into town, Jack returns to find overwhelming evidence (LJ speaks his first word) of Greg's being "unfit to handle a child."

The two families play a game of "footy ball" during the day while at night Roz and Bernie, indicated by a cowboy hat hanging on the outside doorknob of their bedroom, engage in sex games loud enough to be heard throughout the house.

Throwing an engagement soirée for the couple, Roz and Bernie invite fifty Fockers (including nephew Horny Focker) to a cousin's restaurant for the celebration where Jack corners Greg in the bathroom, injecting him with sodium pentothal. From here on things just get out of hand, like a runaway RV, before Pam's former boyfriend, Kevin Rawley (Owen Wilson), shows up for the wedding ceremony.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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