I'm not a huge Ben Stiller fan. IMO he's not talented enough as a comedy actor to carry a leading role. The clunky comedy in [I]Meet the Parents[/I] made me cringe, so I wasn't looking forward to the sequel when Wifey said she wanted to see it. But this rental was a pleasant surprise. Wifey scores a point. A stronger script and a larger cast allowed the film to shed the claustrophobic feeling of the earlier effort. Where the first film lurched from crisis to crisis the second flowed. Hoffman and Streisand gave great performances as Stiller's new age hippy parents. They provided a much more solid foil for De Niros uptight ex-CIA character and this lifted his performance too. Stiller got less screen time this time round, and that's a good thing in my book. If you haven't seen [I]Meet the Parents[/I] yet then I'd say skip it and just watch this one. It is by far the better of the two.
