Little Fockers

It's amazing that Little Fockers can be as bad as it is, and still attract such big name talent. The cast list includes names like Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Owen Wilson, Jessica Alba, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Dustin Hoffman, Harvey Keitel, and Barbara Streisand. All of them talented people who deserve much better. This is the kind of movie actors have long, sad talks with their agents over. It's amazing none of them took one look at the script, and demanded a rewrite.

The movie reunites the cast of 2000's Meet the Parents (an amusing movie) and 2004's Meet the Fockers (less amusing, but better than this), and then plops them in situations so forced, it wouldn't make the grade on a TV sitcom. The movie is not funny in any way from beginning to end. It makes the great miscalculation that people acting stupid and misunderstanding each other is enough to get laughs. It's not, obviously. It's not funny to see actors like Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman act like idiots, unless they're given something to do. Nobody has anything to do in this movie. They're only back, because the last two movies made money. They seem to know they're stuck in a turkey that ran out of inspiration two movies ago. They're merely cashing a paycheck here, as is the director Paul Weitz (Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant), the writers John Hamburg (I Love You, Man) and Larry Stuckey, and hell, probably even the caterers.

Now, no one will ever mistake Meet the Parents for a great movie, but it had some sharp dialogue and an energetic cast. That energy is long gone in this tired installment that finds Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) still feuding with his father-in-law Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) over who should be the head of the family. And the sharp dialogue has been replaced with tired gross out gags about erectile dysfunction, sex, and projectile vomiting. Mainly, though, the movie is all about our old reliable friend, the Idiot Plot. You remember the Idiot Plot, don't you? That's when a movie goes to great lengths to drag out a situation that could be solved if the characters would just say one little word or sentence. Instead of saying the one thing that would clear everything up, the characters act like, well idiots, and do everything in their power to make sure that one thing that would clear everything up is never uttered until the screenplay deems it convenient.

The Idiot Plot is put into overtime in Little Fockers. One of the subplots concerns Greg being paired up with a sexy young woman at work named Andi Garcia (Jessica Alba). The movie then contorts itself wildly in order to put the two characters in one compromising situation after another that makes it look like Greg is cheating on his wife, Pam (Teri Polo), but of course he isn't. And of course, he never says a word, and just lets everyone else assume that he is. This allows De Niro's character to misinterpret everything he sees, and report the wrong information to the rest of the family. Obviously, this whole situation would be cleared up if Greg just stepped up and explained everything, but then the movie would only be 10 minutes long. Speaking of De Niro, he gets his own embarrassing subplot about not being able to sexually please his wife (Blythe Danner) anymore. So, we get a weary scene where he takes a sex drug, gets an erection that won't go away, so Greg has to inject the bulge (which the camera makes sure to focus on, in case we don't get the joke) with a needle, and then...Oh, why go on?

I'm straining my brain to think of one gag, one moment, one second of this movie that is not woefully miscalculated in some way, but I'm coming up empty. The talented cast is completely wasted here. Some (like Polo and Danner) are pushed completely in the background, leaving you to wonder why they even bothered to return at all. And then there are some (Streissand, Keitel, and Hoffman) who barely register as cameo appearances. Hoffman supposedly did not want to appear in this movie originally, because he did not like the script, but the studio was eventually able to talk him into doing a few days worth of work. He should have stuck with his gut instinct and sat this one out. And what of the Little Fockers themselves? They are Greg and Pam's twin children, Samantha (Daisy Tahan) and Henry (Colin Baiocchi). They hold so little presence in the movie itself, and have so little to do with anything that happens, it only leaves you wondering why they named the movie after them.

As if Little Fockers isn't bad enough, the film's final scene actually seems to be leading up to a fourth movie. If there was any justice in Hollywood, this would be the end of it, but thanks to ads running around the clock on television, people will flock to this movie, hoping to recapture the good memories they have of the previous films. If audiences are smart, they'll just stick with their memories, and let this dud sink.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

0 comments