Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Gaylord Focker. Who could’ve imagined that that one name would spawn three one-joke movies that would gross like a half a billion dollars? That’s domestically, and if you’re into tracking box office receipts for movies for some reason I’d bet these three one-joke movies will ultimately clear a billion easily. Gaylord Focker. Simply amazing. Personally I thought ‘Meet the Parents’ was pretty damned funny. Personally I thought ‘Meet the Fockers’ was absolutely terrible. One of the most lopsided ‘entertainment value’ to ‘dollars generated’ movies ever made. But those dollars were generated and finally Universal got Stiller, DeNiro, Wilson, Streisand and Hoffman to temporarily clear off their busy schedules to unite one more time again to create ‘Little Fockers’. As it turns out ‘Little Fockers’ managed to make me laugh way more than ‘Meet the Fockers’ but it is still a fairly lousy one-joke movie.

The little Fockers are five year old twins Samantha (Daisy Tahan) and Henry (Colin Baiocchi). We’ve met ‘em but don’t get too involved in ‘em because despite the fact this movie is called ‘Little Fockers’ it has very little to do with ‘em. It’s just a device to stretch out the one-joke. The movie is really the same as the other two movies in that it follows Greg (Ben Stiller) in his attempts to peacefully co-exist with his father-in-law Jack (Robert DeNiro). His wife Pam (Teri Polo) is still understanding, his mother in law Claire (Blythe Danner) is still sweet and his nemesis Kevin (Owen Wilson) still wants to take Greg’s place.

This time around Jack, through attrition, has decreed that Greg is going to be the new head of the family. The GodFocker. You’ve seen the trailer so the stretch on that particular part of the one-joke kind of lots it edge when Robert DeNiro said it. Also, the twins are having their fifth birthday party and Greg would like to have this party in the back yard of his renovated home which brings Harvey Keitel in the picture as a lazy contractor which theoretically should yield shenanigans. Also, a pharmaceutical Rep would like Greg to head up the campaign for their new Erectile Dysfunction drug which brings Jessica Alba into the picture and will no doubt lead to massive amounts of

hi-jinks. You’ve seen the trailer, you know about the whole needle in the penis thing. Also the Fockers would like to get their kids into an exclusive pre-school which brings Laura Dern into our comedy cameo style and will lead to the Focker kids finally getting some meaningful screen time. Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand are actually in this movie less than the Focker kids so we are not going to worry about them too much either. The shenanigans will be plentiful, the hi-jinks will be bountiful and the laughter will be sparse.

I would say that ‘Little Fockers’ is a completely pointless production, basically created to fatten the pockets of this film’s stars and extort the hard to come by dollars from an unsuspecting public, but being as how we tend to focus on the positive here at the FCU, how pointless can a movie be considering it gave employment to so many people if you were to peruse its filmography. Payroll Accountant Kimberly Aguirre, Production assistant Josh Eggebeen and Travel Coordinator Mimi N. McGreal just to name a few. Plus almost everybody in this movie had a personal assistant. All of the lead actors had assistants, most of the producers had an assistant, you know director Paul Weitz had an assistant and even some of the assistants had assistants. Any type of economic venture that puts that many American citizens to work cannot be labeled as pointless.

Pointless? No. Uninspired? A movie that is basically about nothing? Lazy? A movie that the powers at the top of the food chain seemed to put almost no effort in? This we can say. You want lazy? We know at some point that Greg has to be caught in a compromising position with Alba’s character of Andi. How do you do this? I know, let’s have Andi bring dinner to Greg at his empty house where the two can share a quiet, intimate wine filled candle light dinner. What kind of jerk would misconstrue an intimate candlelight dinner with one of the most beautiful women on the planet earth as inappropriate? So sure Greg, let her on in the house and watch the shenanigans. This is the best they could come up with. I will say however, as an old married man, if you happen to catch me having an intimate dinner with Jessica Alba, rest assured that I fully intend to sin. I’d even call my wife afterwards to let her know what I just did.

I have no clue how these super huge movies get made, but this one looks like that whatever story was going to be told was an afterthought, with the primary focus being who they could convince to be in this movie. Each morning casting director Joseph Middleton, who did great work by the way, would announce ‘Jessica Alba said she do it!’ Then the next day he could proclaim ‘Bobby D talked to Harvey and he said he’d do it!’ Then all these talented and beautiful people would show up on set, somebody remembered they forgot to commission a script and thus they scratched one up in a couple of hours and a Focker movie was birthed. Of course all of this is conjecture.

But, and I’m guessing most of this was on accident, but there were times that ‘Little Fockers’ did make me laugh out loud. It wasn’t the projective vomit, or the needle in the penis, or Gay and Jack punching each other in the face, or Gaylord nearly severing off his finger and gushing blood all over the place… how someone thought that could be funny is beyond me… but it had its moments. There just weren’t nearly enough of them. Great for the economy, not so good for the art of comedy, Say hello to ‘Little Fockers’.