YOU met the parents four years ago in the smutty, smart, smirking original. Now we meet the other parents, the Fockers of the title, and once more comedy is squeezed with grim determination and excruciating embarrassment from introductory encounters of the awkward kind.

With their nuptials imminent, hapless male nurse Gaylord 'Greg' Focker (still Ben Stiller) and his lovely fiancee Pam (Teri Polo) are accompanying her parents, uptight Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) and relaxed Dina (Blythe Danner) to Coconut Grove, Florida. The transportation, Jack's big, black, bomb-proof mobile home, reveals he has lost none of the paranoia that tied Greg in knots in round one.

Greg, the film makers assist you in recalling, has constantly tripped over himself in his wish to avoid upsetting horticulturist Jack, the retired CIA operative who subjects everyone to the most rigorous psychological profiling. Now his latest white lie is about to unravel because his parents are not the lawyer and doctor that Jack is expecting but a pair of Florida liberals instead.

Tactile, happy-go-lucky Dad (Dustin Hoffman) sits around in shorts and open shirt; mom (Barbra Streisand) is a hippy sex therapist for the third age who uses her ever-willing husband for research purposes.

This big hug of a couple has no sense of shame or embarrassment, a sure-fire recipe for more disasters and endless humiliation for Greg (always the strongest suit in the deadpan Stiller's irritating persona).

Away from the securities of home, where Jack's icy cool has mellowed to the point of wearing a specially designed bra to "breast-feed" his grandson, the old sadist is giving Greg the third-degree Byrnes at every opportunity in this weekend in hell.

Greg squirms and you will squirm with him, but whether you laugh will depend on your generosity of mood. Director Jay Roach and screenwriters Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg take the liberty of assuming you loved the humour and the characters from the first instalment, but the four-year gap means the old jokes need time to register when reprised, as if accompanied by an introductory drum roll.

The timing is off and the humour strained and predictable for the first hour, where the newcomers, Hoffman and Streisand in her first role for eight years, fare better than De Niro's jaw-grinding and Stiller's slapstick.

De Niro slowly re-asserts himself, all the better for becoming more melancholic, but the effervescent Meet The Fockers is merely a grin-and-bear-it comic experience, lacking the element of surprise and cruel humour of Meet The Parents.

Updated: 14:59 Thursday, January 27, 2005