Meet the Fockers

Plot

Set two years after the events of the first film, Gaylord "Greg" Focker (Stiller) and his fiancée Pam Byrnes (Polo) decide to introduce their parents to each other. They first fly to Oyster Bay, New York, on Long Island, to pick up Pam's father, retired CIA operative Jack Byrnes (De Niro), her mother Dina (Danner) and one-year-old nephew Little Jack (the son of Bob and Debbie Banks). But rather than going to the airport as planned, Jack decides to drive the family to Miami to meet the Fockers in his new RV.

Once they arrive, they are greeted by Greg's eccentric but fun-loving and amiable father, Bernie (Hoffman), and mother, Roz (Streisand), who is a sex therapist for elderly couples. Worried that Jack may be put off by the Fockers' lifestyle, Greg convinces Roz to pretend that she is a yoga instructor for the weekend. However, small cracks begin to form between Jack and the Fockers, due to their contrasting personalities. The meet gets off to a bad start when a chase between the Fockers' sexually active dog, Moses, and the Byrnes' cat, Jinx, culminates with Jinx flushing Moses down the RV's toilet, forcing Bernie to destroy it to save Moses. Later, Bernie accidentally injures Jack's back during a game of football.

Meanwhile, Pam informs Greg that she's pregnant, and the two decide to keep it secret from Jack. Jack again becomes suspicious of Greg's integrity and quality, when they are introduced to the Fockers' housekeeper, Isabel Villalobos (Alanna Ubach), with whom Bernie reveals Greg had a sexual affair fifteen years before. Jack later takes the RV to Isabel's fifteen-year-old son, Jorge (Ray Santiago), to fix the toilet, but is disturbed by Jorge's striking resemblance to Greg, and the fact that Jorge never met his father, and jumps to the conclusion that he may be Greg's son with Isabel. Meanwhile, Roz, Bernie and Dina realize Pam is pregnant, but promise not to tell Jack. Growing envious of Bernie and Roz's active sex life, Dina consults Roz on sex tips in order to seduce Jack, but none of them work.

Greg and Jack's relationship goes off with a bang when Greg is left alone to babysit Little Jack, whom Jack has been raising via the Ferber method. Despite Jack's instructions to leave Little Jack to self-soothe, Greg cannot stand to listen to Little Jack's cries and tends to the boy to cheer him up by hugging him, letting him watch TV, acting funny and inadvertently teaching Little Jack the word "asshole." Disaster strikes when Greg answers a brief phone call from Roz, which is long enough for Little Jack to wander out of his playpen (after Jinx opens it), put on Scarface and glue his hands to a bottle of rum. After a furious argument with the Fockers and his own family (though amends are quickly made), Jack resumes his spying on Greg and sends Greg and Jorge's hair samples for a DNA test, while inviting Jorge to the Fockers' planned engagement party in the hope of getting Greg to admit he is Jorge's father. At the engagement party, Jack, who automatically assumes that Greg knew about Jorge and has deliberately been keeping him a secret from Pam, introduces Greg to Jorge. Later, when Greg denies knowing anything about Jorge, Jack does not believe him and drugs him with truth serum to make him talk. On stage, Greg uncontrollably blurts out that Pam is pregnant and that Jorge is, without a doubt, his son (in a comically Darth Vader-esque manner) before losing consciousness.

The next morning, Pam questions Greg about Jorge, and Greg does not confirm or deny that he is Jorge's father, but insists that he knew nothing about him before the previous evening. Pam believes him, and is willing to work things out with him. Jack reaches his breaking point with Greg's dishonesty and demands that Pam and Dina leave the island with him. Dina refuses and reveals Jack's actions to everyone. Everyone turns against Jack, with Pam announcing her intent to marry Greg regardless of him having Jorge with Isabel, and Dina admits that they all knew of Pam's pregnancy. A shocked and hurt Jack leaves with his grandson.

Bernie and Greg pursue Jack, but are soon tasered and arrested by an incompetent deputy sheriff, Vern LeFlore (Tim Blake Nelson), for speeding. Jack returns to defend them after being informed Greg is not Jorge's father (his real father turns out to be a baseball player who also resembles Greg), but the overzealous LeFlore tasers and arrests him as well. In their cell, Greg, Jack and Bernie are released by the local judge, Ira (Shelley Berman), who is a client of Roz and close friend of the Fockers. Before they leave, Greg asks both Jack and Bernie to stop their feud. Jack admits that he made a mistake regarding Jorge and reveals his past career in the CIA to Bernie, before apologizing for his actions and making up with the two of them.

Greg and Pam are married that weekend by Pam's ex-fiancé, Kevin (Owen Wilson), who is now an ordained interfaith minister. During the party, Jack asks Roz for some sex tips and sneaks into the RV with Dina.

During the post-credit scene, Jack watches hidden baby-cam footage of the Fockers giving attention to Little Jack over Jack's previous objections: Roz gives Little Jack chocolate, Bernie advises him to use his crying to disagree with everything Jack says, and Greg pretends to drunkenly tell Little Jack to keep it a secret that he left to smoke pot, not answer the phone, when he left Little Jack unattended and that Pam is not really pregnant and only said it so that Jack would let them get married. Greg then pretends to only just discover the camera but then after making mocking gestures at it, Greg reveals that he knew about it all along and none of the things he said before were true.

Cast

Critical response

The film received mixed or average reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 39% of 157 sampled critics gave the film positive reviews and that it got a rating average of 5.2 out of 10. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 with reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 41 based on 34 reviews.

Box office

The film was a commercial success and is currently the highest grossing film starring Robert De Niro. The film grossed $46,120,980 on its opening weekend in North America (5,000 screens at 3,518 theaters, averaging $13,110 per theater, or $9,224 per screen). At the end of the film's 149 days of release, it grossed a total of $279,261,160 in North America, and $237,381,779 in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $516,642,939, with an estimated 44 million tickets sold in the US. The film's budget was $80 million.

Awards and nominations