Director: Paul Weitz
Writer: John Hamburg and Larry Stuckey
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert Deniro, Owen Wilson, Blythe Danner, Terri Polo, Jessica Alba, Laura Dern, Harvey Keitel (too briefly), Barbara Streisand (way too briefly) and, Dustin Hoffman (way, way too briefly.)
Budget: $100-140 Million.
Gross Revenue: $111, 735, 000.
If you’ve read any of the other reviews of this movie, you’ll know that it’s not fairing too well in the press. It seems that Little Fockers confirms what we all know about most film franchises:
First one = Good.
Second One = Okay.
Third one = Smelly turd sandwich.
It’s pretty much true of this film, which lacks a lot of the heart and genuine laughs of the first entry in the franchise. Little Fockers fails because the original formula of Robert Deniro as the cantankerous, sexless, and miserable old man relentlessly hounding the genuine nice guy, has nowhere else to go without descending into sheer "I-just-wanna-blow-a-fucking-hole-in-Deniro’s-head" rage. The whole time I watched this movie I just kept on thinking: “For fuck’s sake, not only is the guy married to your daughter; he has two kids with her, he’s put up with your paranoid bullshit for almost ten years and you’re still following him around in a god-damn disguise?! Shit, cut the guy some fuckin’ slack.
The aggravating thing is that people like Deniro’s character probably do exist in large numbers in America (the very fact that Glenn Beck is given a platform on a major network should surely attest to this.) They’re the tea-party protesting, “Government sponsored health care is for sissies”, mother-fuckers that probably do Google searches on the Arabian looking guy that moved in next door just because he follows “...the Islam.”
What pisses me off the most if that Deniro’s character’s behaviour is pretty much given a pass by most of the other characters in the movie. Of course, it’s never condoned by the other characters, but it’s never appropriately punished either. Whenever Deniro does something severely fucking outlandish, his wife and daughter just give a small chuckle and say something along the lines of “Oh, that’s just our good ol’ over-protective Jack.” Meanwhile, Ben Stiller is humiliated all because he’s a male nurse and has a funny last name.
The good thing about the Focker movies is that an antidote to this kind of free-floating, American, middle-class paranoia is provided in the form of the Focker family. Barbara Streisand and Dustin Hoffman return (though their appearances seem like extended cameos) and provide the counter-point: Parents who nurture their children, respect privacy and perhaps more importantly, actually fucking trust other people.
I audibly breathed a sigh of relief in one scene involving Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman. You see, the main plot of the flick is that Deniro suspects Stiller of having an affair with a pharmaceutical company rep. played by Jessica Alba. Deniro basically gets his creep on for the ‘greater good’ to get to the bottom of Focker’s suspected adultery. He does this by snooping through Focker’s stuff, following him when he goes out, and analysing Alba’s character’s MySpace page all by himself in the dark. However when Hoffman rocks up and sees a half-naked Jessica Alba climb out of a dirt hole with Ben Stiller (they didn’t sleep together or anything, it’s a pure Meet the Parents victim of circumstance moment), he doesn’t suspect a thing and actually trusts his son. Stiller tells Hoffman “Nothing happened,” and Hoffman says “Of course it didn’t, that’s not the Focker way.” Thank fuck for that! A character that has faith in the goodness of his son!
The rest of the film plays out in standard wholesome Hollywood comedy format, and a few of the jokes get some decent laughs. Owen Wilson is great as the over-enthusiastic Kevin, even though I had trouble figuring out why exactly he showed up in the first place. Some of Wilson’s jokes fall flat, but when he descends from an acrobat’s pole in full leotard at the Focker children’s birthday party, declaring that they are “...the chosen ones,” it’s hard not to chuckle.
Ultimately, the movie is not as bad as a lot of the critics have made it out to be. I mean it’s not as good as the first movie, but you could spend your McMoney on something worse. One thing they need to do in the next movie though is show more of Mr. Jynx. That cat is a fucking riot. They should just make the next movie a spin off with Mr. Jynx, going on all kinds of crazy adventures and solving political crises. You could have Al Pacino play the President and after all the shit in the film goes down, Pacino asks Deniro who killed the head of the organisation that was leaking all those confidential cables on the internet, and a trumpet would play and Deniro would look down at Mr. Jynx and then the cat would flat-out wink at the camera and then the credits would roll to a Randy Newman song.
The aggravating thing is that people like Deniro’s character probably do exist in large numbers in America (the very fact that Glenn Beck is given a platform on a major network should surely attest to this.) They’re the tea-party protesting, “Government sponsored health care is for sissies”, mother-fuckers that probably do Google searches on the Arabian looking guy that moved in next door just because he follows “...the Islam.”
What pisses me off the most if that Deniro’s character’s behaviour is pretty much given a pass by most of the other characters in the movie. Of course, it’s never condoned by the other characters, but it’s never appropriately punished either. Whenever Deniro does something severely fucking outlandish, his wife and daughter just give a small chuckle and say something along the lines of “Oh, that’s just our good ol’ over-protective Jack.” Meanwhile, Ben Stiller is humiliated all because he’s a male nurse and has a funny last name.
The good thing about the Focker movies is that an antidote to this kind of free-floating, American, middle-class paranoia is provided in the form of the Focker family. Barbara Streisand and Dustin Hoffman return (though their appearances seem like extended cameos) and provide the counter-point: Parents who nurture their children, respect privacy and perhaps more importantly, actually fucking trust other people.
I audibly breathed a sigh of relief in one scene involving Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman. You see, the main plot of the flick is that Deniro suspects Stiller of having an affair with a pharmaceutical company rep. played by Jessica Alba. Deniro basically gets his creep on for the ‘greater good’ to get to the bottom of Focker’s suspected adultery. He does this by snooping through Focker’s stuff, following him when he goes out, and analysing Alba’s character’s MySpace page all by himself in the dark. However when Hoffman rocks up and sees a half-naked Jessica Alba climb out of a dirt hole with Ben Stiller (they didn’t sleep together or anything, it’s a pure Meet the Parents victim of circumstance moment), he doesn’t suspect a thing and actually trusts his son. Stiller tells Hoffman “Nothing happened,” and Hoffman says “Of course it didn’t, that’s not the Focker way.” Thank fuck for that! A character that has faith in the goodness of his son!
The rest of the film plays out in standard wholesome Hollywood comedy format, and a few of the jokes get some decent laughs. Owen Wilson is great as the over-enthusiastic Kevin, even though I had trouble figuring out why exactly he showed up in the first place. Some of Wilson’s jokes fall flat, but when he descends from an acrobat’s pole in full leotard at the Focker children’s birthday party, declaring that they are “...the chosen ones,” it’s hard not to chuckle.
Ultimately, the movie is not as bad as a lot of the critics have made it out to be. I mean it’s not as good as the first movie, but you could spend your McMoney on something worse. One thing they need to do in the next movie though is show more of Mr. Jynx. That cat is a fucking riot. They should just make the next movie a spin off with Mr. Jynx, going on all kinds of crazy adventures and solving political crises. You could have Al Pacino play the President and after all the shit in the film goes down, Pacino asks Deniro who killed the head of the organisation that was leaking all those confidential cables on the internet, and a trumpet would play and Deniro would look down at Mr. Jynx and then the cat would flat-out wink at the camera and then the credits would roll to a Randy Newman song.
Three Stars:
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