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Between a Fock and a Hard Place
Encore’s Spyder Darling’s look at those Little Fockers!
Robert DeNiro and Ben Stiller in Little Fockers
“Kids bring everyone closer, right?”at least according to the tag line of Little Fockers, the third installment of the Robert DeNiro and Ben Stiller led dysfunctional family franchise that began in 2000 with Meet the Parents. The belly and below laughs continued with 2004’s Meet the Fockers and now the slapstick antics and gross out humor are back with an all star cast that might not be the funniest ensemble comedy since Caddyshack, but does succeed in being the biggest waste of marquee talent this side of Ocean’s Eleven.
Little Fockers continues the cartoonish battle between grumpy patriarch Jack Byrnes (DeNiro) and nerdy son–in-law Greg Focker (Stiller) and is ramped to new heights of cringe inducing inanity, at once as subtle as a dump truck and funny as a needle in a five and a half hour erection (don’t say I didn’t warn you). Not to mention finger pulling farts, five year olds vomiting lasagna and pratfalls from flagpole heights. Though set in the suburbs of Chicago Little Folkers really plays out in the epicenter of the dumbing-down of America, a cultural wasteland Stiller is well familiar with considering his work in such low brow landmarks as Something About Mary, Zoolander and Tropic Thunder.
Though its title suggests a more child centric plot, thankfully Little Fockers’ action revolves around Jack’s desire to appoint a successor to himself as leader of the family’s lopsided circle of trust and Greg’s well intentioned though doomed attempts to prove himself worthy of the title “Godfocker”. But the burden of providing a lifestyle for his wife Pam (Teri Polo) and their mismatched twins that meets Jack’s wrinkled grimace of approval on a male nurse’s salary becomes too much for Greg. Urged on by Andi (Jessica Alba) the drug company hottie who won’t take no for an answer at work or play, Greg begins moonlighting as a spokesman for a new erectile dysfunction drug that quickly becomes the springboard, so to speak for the bulk of the picture’s madcap misadventures.
As if all this wasn’t enough for a sitcom worthy mash-up of All in the Family and Three’s Company, along comes Owen Wilson as Pam’s ex, Kevin, freshly rejected by a Russian swimsuit model and sporting a new back tattoo of the one woman who never let him down, Greg’s wife Pam. Alas, for his part Wilson brings the usual half baked surfer stoner spirituality that once passed for youthful relief but is now a tad tiresome and slightly sad.
Wouldn’t actors like DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand (as Mr. and Mrs. Focker), as well as Blythe Danner and Harvey Keitel have better things to do than romp around like overage teenagers jacked up on Viagra and Four Loko? Apparently not and you know what, as Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live would say “So what, who cares?” Considering the box office success of the first two Focker flicks, someone’s buying tickets. Lately it seems, the lower the product’s IQ the bigger the bang at the box office or voting booth.
Little Fockers is an easy payday for all concerned, is bound to please its target audience, just in time for the Christmas and “Festivus” movie going season and in Ben Stiller’s case is a perfectly good excuse to have a lingerie-clad Jessica Alba leaping on him from across the room. Hmm, now there’s an offer even the “Godfocker” couldn’t refuse.