Buy it... if you just can't get enough of those lazy, happy Randy Newman vocals and their fluffy, parody-filled underscore counterparts.

Avoid it... if Newman's singing began making you pull your hair out several years ago and you don't figure you'll need yet another slight variation on the Newman happy-happy joy-joy attitude.

Newman

Meet the Fockers: (Randy Newman) As an overdue follow-up to the 2000 hit comedy Meet the Parents, Jay Roach's Meet the Fockers extends the characters from the first film into the realm of Greg Focker's (Ben Stiller's) parents. It's an entire film that analyzes what happens when you put one set of highly controlling and tense parents at one side of the table and an extremely relaxed set on the other. Despite a cast of high-power celebrity names, critical consensus on Meet the Fockers has seemingly dwelled upon a flat lack of energy in the film, claiming substandard writing as perhaps the primary culprit. But that certainly did not keep audiences away from the sequel, with several appearances at the #1 position in box office earning Meet the Fockers fiscal success at the very least. The original film in 2000 featured a Randy Newman score and a few songs performed by the modern jazz singer himself. At the time, Newman was venturing into the animated children's film domain, a place in which his lazy, happy vocals serve a very noble purpose. After wearing his welcome on that genre a tad thin by 2003, Newman provided a refreshingly different score (compared to his usual comedy standard) for Seabisquit. In a journey down memory lane, though, Meet the Fockers gives Newman the opportunity to slide right back into ever familiar territory, with the filmmakers apparently deciding that a nearly identical effort from Newman's previous entry in the series being the best method of providing music to the sequel. All new Randy Newman songs appear over the opening and closing credits of Meet the Fockers, with his usual comedy underscore writing mirroring the same attitude throughout the film. Despite the usual, upbeat nature of Newman's involvement, the straight restocking of music from the first film to the second may be one reason why critics didn't find Meet the Fockers to be as novel a concept.

Indeed, it would be very surprising if Randy Newman receives yet another Academy Award nomination for one of his songs from Meet the Fockers. "We're Gonna Get Married" (over the opening titles) and "Crazy 'Bout My Baby" (over the closing credits) are a bit more rock-inspired than Newman's past few film songs, but you nevertheless get the feeling that you've heard both these songs in no less than five movies in recent years. He varies his tone, his lyrics, his structures so little that you begin to wonder if he infringes on his own copyrights at times; these songs could very well have functioned just as well in A Bug's Life or Monsters Inc., and for someone who has heard all of these fluffy songs and scores in the past, Newman's voice at its saturation point --as hard as it may be to believe-- may start to give a person violent thoughts. If not irritating, these songs at the very least are boring to many listeners, and Newman, despite the success he's had in the past with his niche, has got to come up with a new twist, a new set of rhythms, or vastly different instrumentation to keep himself viable. Those nifty little female vocals repeating his lyrics or 'eeewing and ahhhing' behind him have got to be the real kicker this time. The underscore does do its best to elevate the comedy of the story by expanding the emotional depth of the picture. With a few tepid opening tracks, the album would seem hopeless at first, but in Newman's latter cues, he begins to inject some much-needed parody personality in the work. An ambitious pirate-inspired brass theme in "Meet the Fockers" yields to a foreboding and militaristic Godfather spin-off in "Suspicious Mind." A touch of Hispanic flavour leaks into the score in "The Shot" and one very strong orchestral outburst steals the final score cue, "Here's My Plan." On the whole, the Randy Newman underscore material constitutes about 20 minutes on album. Released by Varèse Sarabande, the Meet the Fockers album is nearly identical in structure to Dreamworks' album for Meet the Parents, with the Newman songs followed by score and several rock songs appearing at the end. The non-Newman songs on this album reflect the laid-back attitude of the Focker family quite well. Overall, Newman's underscore shines through at times, but the man simply has to diversify himself in his own vocal department, because the same old song over and over again isn't making as many people smile anymore. **

Bias Check:

For Randy Newman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.83 (in 12 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.18 (in 18,348 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.