Third Time Hardly a Charm for Little Fockers
Sometime you just have to say enough is enough. Major League Baseball player Cliff Lee did just that recently, turning down an offer from the New York Yankees to go play instead for the Philadelphia Phillies even though straying from the Big Apple cost him something around an extra $30-million. But he just shrugged his shoulders and laughed saying, and I’m paraphrasing here because I’m too lazy to look up the actual quote, that at a certain point at numbers like the ones he’s being paid at money doesn’t matter anymore, you have to do instead what’s best for you and your family.
Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro smirk all the way to the bank in Little Fockers © Universal Studios / Paramount Pictures
Why couldn’t Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Owen Wilson, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand and all the rest of the big name cast of Little Fockers done the same thing? Seriously, the world did not need a third entry in a series begun back in 2000 with Meet the Parents. After the ho-hum Meet the Fockers it wasn’t like the world was clamoring for another episode in the Jack Byrnes (De Niro) versus Greg Focker (Stiller) saga. It wasn’t asking for more extended family lunacy. Sure the prior two films were massive hits but like I’ve already said, at a certain point you just have to say enough is enough.
But that’s not what Universal Studios or Paramount Pictures did. Instead, they threw money at the cast, none of whom were willing to turn down those massive paychecks even though there wasn’t a finished script and the director of the first two films Jay Roach declined to return (although he did produce). There was only the bare bones of an idea, and even though the previous film left Jack and Greg on more than reasonable terms that didn’t mean a darn thing to a studio eager to milk its cash cow one more time.
It’s rare when so many unbelievably talented people team together to produce so very little, but that’s exactly the case where it comes to Little Fockers. The film comes very close to being unwatchable, Stiller, De Niro, Wilson and all the rest are doing nothing more than going through the motions, almost no one emerging from this thing unscathed or without looking embarrassed. It is a mindless, pointless and most importantly completely unfunny disaster, and sitting there watching it all a fellow critic and I could do was look at one another in slightly bemused incredulity that this was as big a disaster as it was.
I actually kind of liked Meet the Parents. I was moderately fine with the majority of Meet the Fockers. Be that as it may, I loathed Little Fockers. The script practically doesn’t exist, everyone shows up doing shtick instead of giving a performance. People like Harvey Keitel, Jessica Alba and Laura Dern (who, admittedly, is kind of the best thing going here and the only one who actually tries to create a character, however thin said character – a perpetually peppy private school administrator – might be) show up in throwaway bits and wear out their welcome almost instantaneously. There are poop jokes. There are vomit jokes. There are even I’ve-had-this-erection-for-longer-than-four-hours-and-only-nurse-Focker-can-help-me jokes.
Thing is, none of it works, none of it amuses and very little else comes even partially close to entertaining. New director Paul Weitz (In Good Company, About a Boy) is running on autopilot, while the actors all look like they’ve arrived to pick up a paycheck or to embarrass themselves (primarily Hoffman, Alba and, sadly, the great Blythe Danner), usually both at the same time. The movie couldn’t get over fast enough as far as I was concerned, and even though the anemic looking trailers had me worried nothing could have prepared me for the gargantuan calamity this ultimately proved to be.
So, like I said earlier, someone involved with getting this into production should have known when to say when. Little Fockers isn’t just bad, it’s an abomination and, more to the point, it should never have been greenlit for production in the first place.
Film Rating: ê (out of 4)
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