Meet The Fockers, Hide and Seek

Herald rating: Meet the Fockers * *
Hide and Seek * *

Robert De Niro goes to the light and dark sides in the same week. The first is the box-office hit, the second episode of Meet the Parents, his 2000 comedy turn, in which Pam (Teri Polo) took Greg (Ben Stiller) home to meet her parents, Jack and Dina (De Niro and Blythe Danner) to find out - in a series of misadventures - that Jack was a suitably paranoid former CIA agent.

This time, the foursome is off to Focker Isle in Florida to reverse the process. Roz Focker (Barbra Streisand) is a sex therapist, author of Meet Your Orgasm and collector of erotic carvings. Bernie Focker (Dustin Hoffman) was a lawyer until he took paternity leave to raise Greg and never returned.

Pretty much a retread of the jokes from the first outing and it doesn't reach the same comedic heights, although Streisand and Hoffman are a revelation as the positively optimistic couple in a permanent sunshine state.

That hit-miss feeling is echoed in 20 deleted and extended scenes. Hoffman, Stiller and Streisand explain the toilet humour in The Focker Family Portrait; the superstar couple reminisce on their acting-school days, and De Niro and Stiller talk about their screen chemistry in Matt Lauer Meets The Fockers.

Other extras include Adventures Of A Baby Wrangler, featuring the twins who play the grandchild; The Manary Gland, describing which would give away one of De Niro's key scenes; and how to train a movie-star cat. Director Jay Roach and editor John Poll provide a mildly serious, and informative commentary .

Hide and Seek is a psycho-thriller with De Niro as Dr David Calloway, a psychiatrist not coping with his most difficult case: his daughter, Emily (Dakota Fanning), haunted by her mother's suicide. He takes the teen away from the death scene, their apartment, to a lakeside holiday home. Being winter, it is deserted - except for the obligatory friendly but odd neighbours, including Elizabeth (Elisabeth Shue) and the nosy local sheriff (Dylan Baker).

You can fill in the plot devices: Emily's is-it-or-isn't-it imaginary friend, Charlie; Calloway calling in a specialist and colleague (Famke Janssen); strange things happening ... and on it unravels to a climax that will reveal, all too predictably, the truth behind Emily's nightmares and Charlie.

* DVD, Video Rental 8 June