Little Fockers Review

• 13th Apr 2011

After being pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Meet the Parents and laughing silly at Meet the Fockers, I could not wait to watch the sequel, Little Fockers.  As the title suggests, the Focker family saga now enters the depths of raising children. Greg (Ben Stiller) and Pam Focker (Teri Polo) now have twins, Sam (Daisy Tahan) and Henry (Colin Baiocchi).

Greg Focker is grafting hard to provide for his family and is in the midst of having renovations to his family home. The unproductive lazy builder, Randy (Harvey Keitel) seems to have every excuse in the sun up his sleeve.  Greg needs the house completed in time for the twins’ spectacular birthday party. Greg’s father, Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) is in Seville learning how to dance whilst his mum, Roz (Barbra Streisand) is busy being a television star. As if their restrained animosity was not enough of a problem for Greg, his in-laws, Jack (Robert De Niro) and Dina Byrnes (Blythe Danner) are on their way to visit. Greg manages to get involved in a money making opportunity to promote the drug Sustengo (which is used to address erectile dysfunction) and ends up in close proximity to the rep for the drug company, Andi Garcia, who has no resemblance or similarity with the actor of that name and is played by Jessica Alba.

Prior to the Byrnes’ visit to the Focker’s, Jack suffers a cardiac arrest and after managing to defibrillate himself decides it is time he passes the responsibility of leading the family to someone else and tells Greg he is now the ‘GodFocker’. In order to provide the twins with top notch education, the family look into the Early Human School, a private school whose head teacher is played by Laura Dern.

Jack starts getting suspicious of Greg’s behaviour and after seeing a picture of Greg and the drug rep together decides they are having an affair. The tension between Jack and Greg eventually culminates in a very unmacho fight on the bouncy castle at the twins’ party. De Niro, who has a history of playing fighters in Raging Bull and The Godfather, gives his own brand of tough fighting tinged with comedy. Greg does not just roll over and shows he has acquired maturity from the person he was ten years ago when he first met him. Whilst I saw the comedy element of fighting on a bouncy castle, I thought this scene did not do much for the whole film and, if anything, was slightly too long.  There are points in the film where you have to remind yourself that this is the legend De Niro. However, the less obvious combative dialogue between Jack and Greg was far more impressive and definitely a good thing. It is also worth mentioning that Owen Wilson is endearing as the ever present ‘there is nothing I can’t do or no one I don’t know’ Kevin Rawley, Pam’s ex.

The script as a whole was not very impressive but to be honest, after the first two films, I am not sure there was much else you could squeeze out to create a wholly believable, entertaining script. The acting was good in parts but not wholly convincing.  I also would have liked to see more of Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand to balance out the Byrnes. There were parts in the film that were unnecessary and did not have the desired comedic effect, namely when Greg injects Jack’s private bits with a syringe and is spotted by his son.  Another scene I wished I had missed was when Greg’s son projectile vomits after being force-fed.

I did laugh out loud at parts of the film and enjoyed it as I had seen the other two and liked the characters. However, it is not a film I would watch again and I probably would have preferred a simpler take of the film, with less exaggerated slapstick. I would also have expected a better class of acting from the actors in this film.

Mo Tulloch