Meet the Fockers

This star-studded sequel to Meet the Parents repeats itself and strains for laughs where the original giddily stumbled through them. The first installment chronicled the comically painful introduction of suitor and male nurse Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) to the parents (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner) of his fiancée, Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo). In this outing, all four travel to Florida to meet Mr. and Mrs. Focker (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand), with the polar-opposite patriarchs (Mr. Byrnes is an ultraconservative former CIA agent, and Mr. Focker is an ultraliberal retired legal-aid lawyer) continually testing and bumping heads with each other. This union of strangers is funny at times but returns more often to such elements as an artificial boob used for breast-feeding and a baby saying “asshole,” rather than developing fresh material along the way.