I hate to come off as an angry man, especially right after the holidays, but I'm trying to get back into the swing of writing reviews and we've just come off a series of disappointing films, so here's the review for yet another one: Meet the Fockers. The capsule is: don't bother to waste your money. It lacks the charm of the first film and doesn't take advantage of the talent in its cast. You would think that with Robert De Niro, Barbara Streisand, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, and Blythe Danner you could scrape together a film with some heart and a little life to it.

Alas, in typical Hollywood fashion the sequel is once again not the better of it's original.

In the original film, we found our protagonist, male nurse Gay Focker, off to meet the parents of the woman he wants to marry. About every bit of bad luck befalls Ben Stiller's character and when he attempts to white-lie his way out of many of the problems, he just gets in deeper because his girlfriend's father is recently retired from the CIA.

The trick for the second film is to poke fun at the De Niro character (the ex- CIA agent), who comes across far more bumbling than in the first film. Add to that a pari of overplayed performances by Streisand and Hoffman as the title couple and you get a plodding set of paranoia gags and some cute attempts at humor, but most of them fall flat.

After watching the film, it just seemed like a pile of missed opportunities and potential that was left on the floor in pursuit of getting some money for the holidays.

Here's hoping for better fare as 2005 evolves.