The smash hit Meet the Parents brought together the comic talents of Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro in a memorably disastrous weekend, when prospective son-in-law Greg made just about every mistake you could think of, in front of his girlfriend's parents.

Meet The Fockers continues the story, with Greg and his prospective bride (Teri Polo) faced with another potentially disastrous weekend as her parents (Blythe Danner and De Niro, in ex CIA agent mode) meet up with Greg's racier mom and dad (Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman). Of course, the whole thing is played for laughs - plenty of sight gags and cute animals getting accidentally mistreated and De Niro doing his best to exploit a straight-laced character, ripe for send-up.

As for Stiller, the joke in the first film (which fared better) was that everything Greg did worked out wrong. Here, chance is very much on his side and when you think awful things are about to happen, Lady Luck intervenes. Its an on-running joke throughout the film and, while it might seem right not to cover Greg with embarrassment again, a comic opportunity has been lost as a result.

Parents' director Jay Roach and his screenwriting team have tried to widen the gag pool by introducing the eccentric Fockers from Miami, but sadly these characters are not a patch on the originals and so, for me, this was a bit of a disappointment.