Written by: John Hamburg & Larry Stuckey
Starring: Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Jessica Alba, Laura Dern
Rating: [1/5]
When someone has severe trust issues that impair the ability for them to have a substantive relationship with those around them, it’s a cause for concern. When it doesn’t stem from trauma, at some point you just have to give up on appeasing this strange behavior. By the time we reach Little Fockers, we have more than crossed the rubicon with this behavior, and somehow it only gets worse. It all but cements the diminishing returns of these films.
Now with a set of twins, Greg (Ben Stiller) and Pam (Teri Polo) are on the verge of completing the new build of their home. They welcome Jack (Robert De Niro) and Dina (Blythe Danner), where the former is now dealing with a heart condition and seeks to pass on the role of head of the family. Greg takes this as quite the honor, but things become complicated as Jack suspects him of infidelity.
The whole father-in-law who tests and does not trust his future son-in-law schtick that has remained the mainstay plotline stemming all the way back in Meet the Parents. While it can be excused for the first film, by the time we get to Meet the Fockers, it gets to be a bit too much. Now that it serves as the main plotline once again in this film, it demonstrates that there’s truly nothing left in the tank here. In fact, all it does is continue to make me dislike these characters, which is certainly not the goal behind this film.
The suspicions arise from little crumbs Jack picks up, which makes him think Greg has lost passion for his daughter. From a pack of erectile dysfunction pills that are not his to the misunderstandings one would only find in a movie, this sets the stage for the deeply rooted mistrust Jack has for Greg, which will seemingly never go away. It’s no longer cute or something admirable as a father looking out for his daughter but rather a mean-spirited man who should simply be ignored, yet these films continue to insist the other characters should desire to be in his presence. Better yet, all of these movies have been an exercise to win over his approval, and it boggles the mind to consider exactly why.
If it’s not obvious by now, the character of Jack has left a negative impression on me, which is a shame because Robert De Niro at least does a decent job at portraying the character. He at least captures the consistency in this character’s mistrust even if it becomes tedious to play out for the third consecutive time. It also doesn’t help that Greg has also seemingly remained the same clumsy guy whose schtick has also more than run its course. At the very least we could get some good humor along the way, but Little Fockers could not even deliver on that front.
Much of the humor on display in this film hits the same notes that have been done before but to a lesser degree than even the last film, which is bad on its own. To reach even a lower level of quality is almost impressive. A certain gag involving Greg needing to medically inject Jack with something really just hits the nail on the head of the level of humor we’re working with here, and the people behind it found it so funny they tried to sell the movie on by placing it in the trailer. You can see in moments where this film just tries to throw something on screen to make it work, including the only element of the previous movie that worked with Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) and Roz Focker (Barbra Streisand), but even they could not salvage this trainwreck.
One of the clearest cases where a series of films gets precipitously worse as it goes along, Little Fockers above all else displays the depths a bad comedy can sink down. It’s beyond me how these films continue to make money, but I guess there’s something about watching an older man continue to not trust his son-in-law that gets people to the theaters. All the power to them, but I have had more than my fill of everything Focker, and I hope for all of our sake that they do not get another bright idea for how Jack will continue to try to break up Greg and Pam.
