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Little Fockers

Here’s the kind of movie Little Fockers is: The director got Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel together for what, as far as I can tell, is only their second time together since Mean Streets and Taxi Driver (they were both in Copland, but I don’t recall that they had a scene together), and what does he give them to do? Nothing. Keitel has an undignified bit part as a sleazy contractor, he and DeNiro bark at each other a bit as part of a general melee, and the scene moves on. I don’t think that anyone involved with the film even realized what a momentous occasion this was. If so, they certainly didn’t take advantage of it.

Despite the fact that they got a gaggle of stars to pop up in this, Little Fockers is a textbook example of a lazy sequel. Give the audience more or less what they paid to see the last few times and they’ll line up to see it. Chris Weitz (American Pie) has replaced Jay Roach in the director’s chair, and the film has fewer scenes of gross-out humor than its predecessors, which probably means that fans of Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers won’t like it. There isn’t much of a plot aside from former CIA agent Jack Byrnes (DeNiro) testing his son-in-law the male nurse (Ben Stiller) to see if he has what it takes to become the family patriarch. Cue comical misunderstandings, expressions of rage, and endless uses of the word “focker.” You would think that they would have exhausted that gag by now, but then you’d also think that audiences wouldn’t be laughing at it anymore. (Wrong both times.) Oddly, given that he’s been cheerfully admitting to interviewers that he only did this one for the money, Dustin Hoffman is the only one in the cast who actually seems to be enjoying himself. Fans of the cast aside, Meet the Fockers is strictly for the crowd that finds it hysterical when a five-year-old girl says “boner.”

m. faust


Watch the trailer for Little Fockers




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