Which Family Should You Spend This Holiday With?

Meet the Fockers
directed by Jay Roach
story by James Herzfeld and Marc Hyman
screenplay by John Hamburg and James Herzfeld
starring Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand, Blythe Danner and Teri Polo

Spanglish
written and directed by James L. Brooks
starring Paz Vega, Adam Sandler, Tea Leoni, Cloris Leachman

       With all the points against it, Meet the Fockers should be completely avoidable. It shouldn’t exceed its antecedent. It shouldn’t be any good at all. Surprisingly the rules don’t apply, though, and the sequel comes out forgivably entertaining.
        Meet the Parents –love it or hate it –was an overrated celebration of Ben Stiller’s awkward shtick better utilized in David O. Russell’s comedy of errors Flirting With Disaster.  Director Jay Roach, with Parents, applied the clumsiness to slapstick resulting from dishonesty and concealment where Disaster contained it within the neurosis and embarrassment of the character giving it incidental cause rather than deliberate effect. Since then Stiller has done even worse to exploit the bit. By the release of this year’s Along Came Polly, written and directed by Parents co-scribe John Hamburg, the actor seemed to be too comfortable with discomfort.
         Meet the Fockers continues with the deceit and the covering up and the banal lesson to “be yourself”, yet there is much less bumbling. You won’t see any failed acrobatics, accidental fires or shit splattering. Unfortunately there is another sports injury – not caused by Stiller this time –and an idiotic incident involving a pet and a toilet. Additionally, and more trite, the movie features some baby shenanigans and some geriatric jokes (neither of which is actually unbearable). But why focus on the bad parts? If I want to nitpick, I’ll ponder the presence of Teri Polo. Sure, someone has to play Stiller’s fiancé but she is so unnoticeable and unmemorable that she needn’t even be in the picture.
        The movie gets it right with its four necessary actors. I don’t mean to ignore Blythe Danner’s talents but even the pets are given more to do than her.           Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand, as The Fockers, are a cute addition and while they might evoke Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin, who play Stiller's parents in Flirting With Disaster, they are actually less the aging hippie stereotype and more just sweet, open people who are eccentric if you see them as such, not because you’re forced to see them as such. Hoffman is especially charming –the happiest he’s ever appeared on film. Still, behind the great big smile is the actor’s career featuring such gawky characters as might father someone as insecure as Stiller’s Gaylord.
        Returning as stiff conservative Jack Byrnes, Robert De Niro tries less and achieves more. Letting go of the self-mockery helps a lot; he’s able to be the character instead of forcing the position of straight man. Stiller also comes back more natural than before. His facial expression is more successful than anything since his FOX sketch show and the film’s ability to show growth since the original –Gaylord is quicker to apologize than excuse and to assert more than agitate –allows for broader ensemble comedy instead of a one-man travesty.
         For the willing, Meet the Fockers can represent political polarization in America and the deliberation of setting the picture in Florida and emphasis on surveillance makes for more relevance than the original. I don’t know about you, but such parallels are getting tiring this year. Not that its pointed depth detracts in any way from the enjoyment to be had.
          I don’t recommend seeing Meet the Fockers so much as I don’t not recommend it. You could do better and rent Flirting With Disaster or you could do worse with –I hate to say this –Russell’s latest, I w Huckabees or even Meet the Parents, though I guess you do sort of need to see the previous film for familiarization purposes. It may just be the only decent live-action comedy to see this Christmas.

          Spanglish could be considered Adam Sandler’s Parenthood, the film that lifts him from silly, immature roles and into adulthood –the kind of adulthood that doesn’t signify smart, adult-themed movies so much as family pictures where he plays the dad more often than the oversized kid. Will he actually become situated there and remain, never to act like a fool again, as Steve Martin has (I won’t believe his return with The Pink Panther until I’ve seen it)? I doubt it, and I hope not, for even though his baby-talking career could go lower than Mr. Deeds, we need him to stick with it in the off chance he again makes something as fun as Billy Madison (it is his equivalent to The Jerk, no?). Even Punch-Drunk Love, while more highbrow, did not abandon his forte.
         In the new James L. Brooks film Sandler plays a man who not only doesn’t speak nonsense, make goofy faces or spotlight his appreciation for Culture Club, but is mature and sincere in all regards. In fact, his character’s only flaw is that he’s too perfect. He also isn’t given much to do other than be perfect, occasionally giving monologues about family and sanity with cued score equating the scenes to sitcom conclusions. If he had any real conflicts the way Steve Martin does in Parenthood, his evolving choices as an actor might be as acceptable.
          One scene near the end does develop some harbored emotions in the actor but like much of the rest of the movie, his character’s wife, played by the beautiful and undervalued Tea Leoni, puts first her selfish, neurotic, tactless and unforgivable self. Completely contrasting her husband, she has no redeeming qualities at all. Her flaws even make her alcoholic mother (Cloris Leachman) seem angelic. Not that we would think her any less so except for the script’s allusions to her being otherwise.
           Forget that neither Sandler nor Leoni are the true stars of the picture. The poster aside, Paz Vega is the one to watch. She radiates each scene she’s in, attracting attention away from the more celebrated actors. And still the protagonist is not her but Shelbie Bruce, who plays her daughter. This should be initially obvious by the film’s narration served by her college admissions essay –that piece of writing in which we try convincing ourselves what we learned from some adolescent experience. Hard to believe that Adam Sandler could ever be the most overshadowed person in a movie.
          Way too long and very unfocused, Spanglish ends up merely a 2 ½ hour game to figure out who the main character is. Since I just told you, there is no need to sit through it yourself. Despite its duration, much of the story feels left out. Subplots are forgotten, backgrounds seem abridged and one little boy is nearly omitted. James L. Brooks might have used the idea for another television show, but we all know his TV is better than his movies and this is definitely his worst movie yet.

Expectation Key


there's no possible way we will even see this

we'll eventually see this but we aren't really expecting much

anticipating the release of this one but we're sure to be left unsatisfied

such high expectation of this film only leaves room for disappointment