I got home from a long trip the other day, and yesterday a friend of
mine called me up to welcome me back and see if I wanted to go to the
movies. We have two major movie theaters here in town, one of which is a
dollar theater. The nice thing about the dollar theater, of course, is
that it’s cheap. The not-so-nice part is that there are a lot fewer
movies to choose from, so you’re more likely to end up watching
something you’d rather not pay full price for anyway. Last night’s movie
was Little Fockers, the third installment in the Meet the Parents series starring Ben Stiller and Robert DeNiro.
It took me until last year to finally see Meet the Parents, and I never did see the sequel, Meet the Fockers.
I didn’t really need to, though; this movie filled in the gaps
sufficiently, which mainly involve Greg’s (Stiller) touchy-feely
parents, stay-at-home dad Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) and television sex
therapist Roz (Barbra Streisand). Greg is a nurse and a devoted family
man. He’s a very decent guy, which begins to really hit home for his
intimidating father-in-law, Jack Byrnes (DeNiro), after his other
son-in-law cheats on his wife and takes off. A mild heart attack leaves
this towering giant of a patriarch shaken and determined to see Greg
carry on as family protector if anything should happen to him.
As in the first movie, Stiller and DeNiro have a great dynamic. Both of
them are likable, but it’s easy to see how they drive each other crazy.
While the first movie is very heavy on the slapstick and requires Greg
to do several incredibly stupid things, in this movie, the disasters
that happen really aren’t his fault. Some cringe-worthy moments do
occur, but I felt like I was able to root for him more in this movie
since he really is in the right most of the time, and he’s trying very
hard to do well by his wife, his children and his in-laws. Meanwhile,
Jack’s behavior in this movie is pretty reasonable as well. He’s looking
out for his family too, and his limited point of view, along with a
generally suspicious outlook, causes him to come to unfortunate but
understandable conclusions. The wives, Dina Byrnes and Pam Focker
(Blythe Danner and Teri Polo), have minimal roles, just playing it
straight and supportive as their husbands lose their heads.
The plot of the movie is driven by miscommunication and one extremely
over-the-top new character. The in-laws have come to town for the fifth
birthday party of the Focker twins, precocious Samantha (Daisy Tahan)
and dopey Henry (Colin Baiocchi). It’s not for a few days, though, so
that’s plenty of time for trouble to develop. Most of that trouble
involves Greg’s involvement with a perky drug rep named Andi Garcia
(Jessica Alba). For some reason, she is really eager for him to be one
to give a speech about her company’s new drug at an upcoming convention.
And he could use the money, especially since he is in the process of
trying to get his kids into an exclusive private school. But he doesn’t
want Jack to know about the convention, since he wants him to think he
is totally financially secure, and leaving the father-in-law out of the
loop on this little detail leads to big problems later on. It doesn’t
help, either, that Pam’s ex, guileless golden boy Kevin (Owen Wilson),
returns to town just before the party after Greg’s advice about how to
propose to his supermodel girlfriend backfires on him.
Basically, I like the main characters in the movie, except for Andi, who
seems to ooze phoniness and spends the entire movie flinging herself
relentlessly at a married man. I’m really not sure why. I kept looking
for some sinister motivation, but it seems the only explanation for her
behavior is that she has a mad crush on Greg and won’t let anything
stand in the way of her having her way with him. While Greg thinks she’s
a knockout, it’s a mark of his character that he is never tempted to
give in to her advances. But that can’t stop her from putting him in a
couple of very compromising positions. I found myself cringing most of
the time when she was on screen, and her totally unprofessional behavior
made me wonder how she managed to hang onto her job.
Aside
from her, what really annoyed me about the movie was the gross-out
humor. There’s the tedious tittering over Greg’s full name, with his
birth name of Gaylord coming up several times at awkward moments,
particularly with Prudence (Laura Dern), the spacey director of the
school he wants his children to attend. There’s the fact that the drug
he’s supposed to be hawking is basically Viagara for heart patients, so
you can imagine the eye-rolling jokes there, especially the piercingly
uncomfortable moment highlighted in the previews in which Greg must
administer a shot to counteract the drug’s effects after Jack takes some
on the sly. And given the profession of Greg’s mother, almost
everything she says has some sort of sexual connotation, and that gets
old fast. Finally, along with all the lewd humor, there are disgusting
moments like Henry barfing all over his father or Greg taking a chunk
out of his hand while carving a turkey, which, if I’m remembering right,
pretty much happened in the first movie and was unpleasant enough then.
The first two movies did really well at the box office, and
at this point the third movie just feels like the cast and writers
trying to stretch the series out beyond its natural end point. The movie
concludes in such a way that it seems to be baiting us for yet another
sequel, and at this point I can’t help thinking it’s a little excessive.
DeNiro and Stiller do make a great team, and Little Fockers has its moments of humor and sweetness. But I think this is a franchise that has run its course.
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