A clever grab of high-concept casting places Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman in pivotal comic roles in Meet the Fockers, a droll and subtly endearing comedy about the cretinous task of embracing new relatives.  The slogan insignia for this film, as well as its blockbuster predecessor Meet the Parents, might well be that old adage "you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family."

In the previous instalment, which garnished more than US$300,000,000 without so much as glimpse of a Hobbit or a wizard or a Greek warrior, we met Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller) and his fiancée Pam (Terri Polo).  Gaylord, or Greg, a professional nurse by trade, tried desperately and mostly fruitlessly to win the acceptance of his step-father-to-be Jack Brynes (Robert De Niro), a stiff former CIA snob determined to maintain the Byrne family's "circle of trust."  In a vicious initiation ceremony of errors Greg set the backyard on fire, disfigured a lady's face while playing water volleyball and, most memorably, survived a gruelling polygraph interview. 

About two very different families forced by a marriage to endure each other, the film mimes the lifestyle clash comedy shtick of Father of the Bride, and plays it to extremes.  The Focker parents -- Bernie (Hoffman) and Roz (Streisand ) are the easy going new age hippy types.  The Brynes (especially Jack) are conservative, cautious and highly-strung.  Bernie is the kind of guy whose idea of good dinner table patter is the story of how his son lost his virginity.  Jack on the other hand has no problem drugging his future stepson in the hope of prying open any skeletons in his closet, or planting high-tech surveillance equipment for the same purpose.  Bernie constructed a loving shrine for his son's medal collection -- mostly 6th, 7th, 8th place ribbons -- which Jack hilariously describes as "a celebration of mediocrity."

The screenplay for Fockers, penned by the same crew who worked on Meet the Parents is fluent and funny and does well dispersing its jokes liberally through the running time.  The gags are versatile in their approach -- incorporating dialogue, sit-com and slapsticks elements - and as the spray painted kitty incident in the first film can remind us, certainly not above the odd spot of animal humour.  Feline fans will be glad to know that Jinx the toilet trained cat is back and, in the series' signature moment of pooch cruelty, more than happy to flush the Fockers' horny dog down the dunny.

The humans mould neatly into their characters, making even Bob De Niro's recent exposition into comedy a highly tolerable attraction.  Stiller again nourishes his role as Hollywood's number one straight man while Hoffman and Streisand contribute exactly what the series needed in Focker's parents: two nicely judged comic performances from a couple of familiar and well appreciated personas who, without attempting to steer the film or snatch the spotlight, gel gracefully with the rest of the ensemble.

Director Jay Roach's (Meet the Parents, Austin Powers in Goldmember) sense of the jocular is an urbanised, largely inoffensive brand of humour, fuelled largely from characters and personality quirks and driven by performances.  Occasionally the jokes feel forced -- as if there were some ambitious laugh-o-meter quota that direly needed to be filled -- but mostly Meet the Fockers is a breezy light weight film: a highly enjoyable holiday comedy without the pretension of Boxing Day's typical big budget blockbusters.

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