?Meet the Fockers? could have been one of those sequels that tries desperately to capitalise on the unexpected success of the original movie ? in this case, ?Meet the Parents,? which was a huge hit in 2000.

(Admit it: That?s how it looked to you, too, even if you liked ?Meet the Parents.?)

So it?s an unexpected pleasure to report that ?Fockers? is an improvement on ?Parents? ? whose jokes dragged on too long ? thanks largely to the presence of Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand, who play Ben Stiller?s parents.

Streisand hasn?t appeared in a movie since ?The Mirror Has Two Faces? in 1996, and the few films she made in the ?80s and ?90s (?Yentl,? ?Nuts,? ?The Prince of Tides?) didn?t exactly allow her to show off her comedic timing. It?s easy to forget that this funny woman made her film debut in 1968?s ?Funny Girl? ? and won a best-actress Oscar in the process.

Here, as Roz Focker, she seems like she?s having an absolute ball and looks just radiant, even under that same big permed hairdo she donned for ?A Star Is Born? and ?The Main Event? in the late ?70s.

As a painfully candid and wildly uninhibited sex therapist, she gets to verbally bounce off Hoffman (playing Bernie Focker, Greg Focker?s overly friendly dad) and literally bounce off Robert De Niro, reprising his role as humourless former CIA agent Jack Byrnes, when she gives him a much-needed massage.

Streisand gets to be goofy. She gets to smile. She gets to laugh. She and Hoffman look like they?re having so much fun together, it?s impossible not to laugh along with them.

But ?Meet the Fockers? is still laden with the same obligatory toilet humour as its predecessor, as Greg introduces his mother and father to the uptight, WASPy parents of his fiancee, Pam (Teri Polo). After all, director Jay Roach is back at the helm, along with ?Meet the Parents? screenwriters Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg.

The cherubic-looking grandson of Jack and Dina Byrnes (Blythe Danner, also back from part one) repeatedly makes the baby sign-language motion for poop (and his first word is one we can?t repeat here).

When the Byrneses drive down to Florida to meet the Fockers (in Jack?s Kevlar-covered, Plexiglass-windowed motor home), their genius cat flushes the Focker?s dog down the toilet. (You?ve seen this sight gag a million times in the TV ads, and it?s no funnier seeing the tiny canine, shivering and covered in blue goo, when you?re sitting in the theatre.)

The technologically challenged Bernie, who can?t figure out his answering machine, whines to Roz on the outgoing message about how he longs to make a chimichanga, even though it gives him gas.

Roz whines back at him to go ahead and make a chimichanga ? which comes out as, ?So make a chimi ... beep!?

The gag is mildly funny the first time. By the third time, it?s painful.

Instead of a disastrous water volleyball game, there?s a disastrous backyard football game. Instead of ... anyway, you get the point.

But there are enough redeeming moments, including a tour-de-force sequence involving baby Jack, super glue, ?Scarface? and a bottle of rum. And Dina Byrnes gets back in touch with her inner tigress after decades of marriage (thanks to some sock-puppet pointers from Roz) in a way that?s sort of lovely and sweet ? and funny, too.

Simply the idea of all these stars together ? making fools of themselves on the same screen despite their individually impressive filmographies ? is enough of an absurdly funny prospect to make ?Meet the Fockers? worth seeing.

?Meet the Fockers,? a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humour, language and a brief drug reference. Running time: 114 minutes.