THE PARENT TRAP

Reviewed - MEET THE FOCKERSBefore Jay Roach's ho-hum sequel to the not-much-funnier Meet the Parents kicks off, the director has to solve a problem of his own making. In the last act of the first film Robert De Niro's uptight maniac, following the inflexible dictates of mainstream comedy, was forced to modify his intolerant urges, learn to love his daughter's sensitive Jewish boyfriend and become a kinder, gentler retired torturer.

Well, though Jack Byrnes does still claim to like Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller), the intervening years (and the inflexible dictates of the mainstream sequel) have seen his stern personality reassert itself. Long before his absurdly well-appointed mobile home reaches the Florida island where Gaylord's parents live in hippie bliss, Jack, taking on the aspect of Donald Rumsfeld at a peace rally, is already starting to leak sparks of repressed fury.

Considering all the recent chatter about the two Americas, divided into red and blue by their attitudes towards gay marriage and Michael Moore, Meet the Fockers offers delicious opportunities for social satire. And the notion of casting Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as the senior Fockers - Blythe Danner, reprising her role as Jack's wife, can rarely have felt less famous - is funny enough in itself for you to feel their very presence might cast a mirthful glow over the auditorium.

Sadly, the picture, though permanently on the verge, never becomes properly hilarious. One can, perhaps, excuse the director for being so coy about the anti-Semitism that must surely colour some of Jack's attitudes, but Roach could still have worked a little harder at stoking up antagonism between the two families. As things stand, the fights are gutless and the action relies too strongly on a few passable set-pieces - culinary adventures with Gaylord's desiccated foreskin; Jack's commando cat takes on the Fockers peacenik dog - which, though diverting enough, hardly explain why the film ate the US box office alive last month.

Hoffman does a nice job of fleshing out a wafer-thin character, while Streisand, though criminally underused, deserves credit for flinging herself at indignities with abandon. We could, however, have done without the deadeningly unfunny mishaps involving Jack's little grandson, who seems to have been inserted to appeal to those viewers who find all children inherently amusing. Rumours abroad suggest that an unwelcome third sequel is to be titled Little Fockers.

It is surely giving nothing away to reveal that, before such a film kicks off, the writers will, for a second time, have to find a way to direct Jack back towards the right. Though there are pokes at both liberal and conservative lifestyles in Meet the Fockers, we are never in much doubt as to which side's values will triumph.