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Dom Robinson reviews
Universal Pictures Video
This DVD: 
Double Boxset:
- Cert:
- Cat.no: 8301797
- Running time: 123 minutes
- Year: 2004
- Pressing: 2005
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 28 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, Hungarian
- Subtitles: English, Hungarian
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Booking The Flight: The Script, The Story, Waiting For The Flight: Building The Terminal, Boarding: The People of The Terminal, Take Off: Making The Terminal, In Flight Service: The Music of The Terminal, Landing: Airport Stories
Director:
- Jay Roach
(Meet the Fockers)
Producers:
- Robert De Niro, Jay Roch and Jane Rosenthal
Screenplay:
- Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg
(based on the story by Jim Herzfeld and Marc Hyman)
Music:
- Randy Newman
Cast:
- Jack Byrnes: Robert De Niro
Gaylord “Greg” Focker: Ben Stiller
Bernie Focker: Dustin Hoffman
Roz Focker: Barbra Streisand
Dina Byrnes: Blythe Danner
Pam Byrnes: Teri Polo
Kevin Rawley: Owen Wilson
Isabel: Allana Ubach
Jorge Villalobos: Ray Santiago
Girl on bus honking horn: Bernadette Perez
Meet The Fockers picks up exactly from where the first film ended, a movie that fulfilled a number of the comedy elements and had good interaction between between Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, a few great set-pieces (the cat and the vase, Greg on the roof and the ensuing chaos, plus checking in at the airport towards the end), but overall it was so-so 6/10. Will the sequel improve upon things?
The premise is to meet Greg’s parents, Bernie and Roz Focker (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand), as the title suggests. Along the way, there are jokes made about Greg being a male nurse, teaching the baby (Pam’s nephew) how to sign, the fact Greg’s parents are far more into sex than his repressed in-laws and that Roz is a sex therapist. We see Bernie mocking Jack’s CIA roots, plus Moses, the Focker’s dog, trying to mate with Jinx, the Byrnes’ cat, which results in a situation that proves Jinx can now flush the toilet. There’s a brief American Footall game which results in Hoffman giving De Niro an injury and the child inadvertently learns bad language from Greg.
It’s comfortable viewing, but far from a laugh-out loud comedy. You know things are going to work out and that Greg and Pam will get married towards the end, since that’s the point of bringing the two families together. The ending suggests that this is the last we’ll see of either family since it’s predictable all the way, and it’s obvious how many jokes are going to come out of the surname Focker. You can see them all coming, along with how pretty much all of the movie will turn out.
Again, like with The Terminal, a repeated note for Dreamworks who released this DVD via Universal. As a regular reviewer of DVDs and a lover of films, I don’t like DVDs that have copyright logos and “Do Not Duplicate” stamped across the screen all the way through the bloody film, even though here it just appears every 10 minutes. I wasn’t planning on duplicating it, I was planning on watching it and enjoying it, the latter of which I wasn’t fully able to do. I will bring this up every time I review one of your DVDs with such a stupid and patronising message in the middle of the screen, you ignorant people, particularly where the “Do Not Duplicate” interferes with the subtitles. They’re even worse than a TV channel’s onscreen logos! (see here for more info about these)
And another thing, this is the second Universal disc I’ve received, following The Terminal, where the disc has been passed around so many different hands before it’s got to me, because of your ridiculous restrictions on the number of discs issued, that it gets to a point on the disc where it becomes barely playable. I got as far as almost 1hr 15mins in, and it froze. I had to switch DVD players to one that isn’t hooked up via s-video so the quality wasn’t as good and this only seems to happen with Universal discs.
There are few problems with the picture, in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, the main problem being that it looks occasionally a little sticky, but I’m not sure whether that’s due to the way it was filmed or this disc was mastered – probably a combination of the two. It comes and goes but won’t be noticed by too many. Either way, it’s a little hard to appreciate the visuals with onscreen logos burning into my TV screen, thankyou very much Dreamworks!
The sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1 only, and I have to ask – why include Hungarian as a second DD5.1 soundtrack when they could’ve included an English DTS 5.1? Hungarian!? Oh well, when all’s said and done, this is a straight comedy with only functional sound.
The extras, which also have the copyright logo stamped all over them – every five minutes this time, are as follows, some of which – generally the film clips – are in letterboxed 16:9. However, most of these are the kind of things you’ll look at once and never return to:
- Deleted Scenes (16 mins): 20 here, all individually chaptered. They’re worth a watch, but I’d only put a couple of them back. They would be No.5 (the thing that drops into the food, extended), Nos. 12 & 13 (part of the same scene in the motor home between Greg and Jack).
There’s one of the Focker introductions (No.14) which the Region 1 DVD has as a scene marked for seamless-branching so you effectively get it sewn back into the movie as an extended version. We don’t get such treatment with this UK release, although as I read on Sendit.com this DVD is meant to have these and we don’t, it could be that there are 10 additional scenes which didn’t end up on this DVD at all. That said, looking at all 20 on here, as many of them are extended ones it could be that the 10 are included here, albeit not branched back into the movie. I think they work better on their own as they just drag out the events already seen.
- Bloopers (11 mins): There seems far too many of these here, so you start to tire of them after a few minutes.
- Inside the Litter Box: Behind the scenes with Jinx the Cat (4 mins): A puff-piece about the cat.
- The Manary Gland (3 mins): The plastic breast that De Niro wears to feed his grandchild.
- Fockers Family Portrait (6 mins): Film clips and soundbite interviews about Bernie, Roz and Greg.
- The Adventures of a Baby Wrangler (5½ mins): Another average so-called featurette, this time about what it’s like to deal with a little brat onscreen.
- An Interview with the Fockers (8 mins): A made-for-TV “everybody’s smiling” piece, with obvious edits and a camera that keeps zooming in and out when it’s not required., with film clips stuck in there too. Nothing to write home about.
- Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events trailer (1½ mins): Totally unrelated, but obviously something Dreamworks wanted to plug.
- Audio Commentary: From director Jay Roach and editor/co-producer Jon Poll
Subtitles are in English and Hungarian for the film and extras, there are 20 chapters and the menu features music from the film, replaying it over and over a few times before starting the film again whether you wanted it to or not.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.