By Little Fockers is a terrible f*cking movie. Notice how I didn’t do a play on the word Focking? It’s because this movie doesn’t deserve its own lingo or puns.
After Meet the Parents – which I remember enjoying – and Meet the Fockers – which was filled with constant wincing and groaning – the trilogy is complete, and I thoroughly hope the series remains dead until at least a decade later when some jerk pitches digging it out of the grave with Stiller set to become a grandparent and hoping to emulate his father-in-law’s ominous ways only to be bested by a hunky, confident soon to be son-in-law.
Not only am I angry at this movie, but also the audience who most certainly saw some of the scenes in trailer preview spoilers, yet still hysterically laughed even though the incident was both telegraphed and still fresh in our memories. I don’t take off review score points for bad trailers, but shame on the audience for perpetuating this poor industry standard. This ruined my night, which is why I don’t care if I ruin this movie, so expect big spoilers after the jump.
Little Fockers is a terrible f*cking movie. Notice how I didn’t do a play on the word Focking? It’s because this movie doesn’t deserve its own lingo or puns.
After Meet the Parents – which I remember enjoying – and Meet the Fockers – which was filled with constant wincing and groaning – the trilogy is complete, and I thoroughly hope the series remains dead until at least a decade later when some jerk pitches digging it out of the grave with Stiller set to become a grandparent and hoping to emulate his father-in-law’s ominous ways only to be bested by a hunky, confident soon to be son-in-law.
Not only am I angry at this movie, but also the audience who most certainly saw some of the scenes in trailer preview spoilers, yet still hysterically laughed even though the incident was both telegraphed and still fresh in our memories. I don't take off review score points for bad trailers, but shame on the audience for perpetuating this poor industry standard. This ruined my night, which is why I don’t care if I ruin this movie, so expect big spoilers after the jump.{{page_break}}
For a movie called Little Fockers, it oddly doesn’t feel like the children ever have a front row seat in the plot. There’s this expensive school they try out for, and the movie massively underuses Laura Dern as a teacher, and then the kids become mostly useless for the remainder of the film as the big name actors pull the exact same tricks they did in the last two films. Instead of Dern becoming a pivotal side character we instead get to see Jessica Alba (Andi Garcia) from start to finish. She’s still gorgeous, and one scene actually offers the best view of her ass in any film of hers I’ve seen, but surprisingly she was also one of the only acting performances I enjoyed. The script called for her to be dramatically goofy and flirtatious, and she embraced it by over acting the part in a way that got more smiles from me than any other character in the story.
Owen Wilson (Kevin Rawley) continues to be the king of carefree, douchey roles in Hollywood who are hard to hate despite being so frustratingly shallow and relaxed. Greg Focker’s (Ben Stiller) dad (Dustin Hoffman) was literally discarded for the entire movie until the end, yet the mother (Blythe Danner) on the other side of the family was even less useful despite being present the whole time. Roz Focker (Barbra Streisand) helped conveniently end a few plotlines and the writers behind Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) massively caused this movie to be a complete failure. All of this left me shaking my head wondering why Teri Polo hasn’t had her agents fighting for better roles, because she was the only ounce of emotional skill in the whole movie since Hoffman, Alba, Wilson, and Stiller just walked through their roles like zombies.
I downright despised what they did to Jack Byrnes in the plot. It’s one thing to deliver a bad movie, but it’s a whole other issue when the writers get a character wrong. After the past two movies of Stiller trying his hardest to gain De Niro’s respect even though his actions push him further and further away, we begin this movie with the sigh of relief that they’re finally family. Not only does De Niro no longer make Stiller nervous, but he even likes his son-in-law. So the writers decide it would be a good idea to have De Niro completely give up on Stiller halfway into the movie and actually plead with his daughter – who has been married to him for years and now has kids – to leave Stiller and settle down with Owen Wilson. Um, what? Sure, some fathers might be this insensitive and stupid, but it doesn't fit Jack at all. It’s not too often that I can pick up my right hand and look at it knowing that with a pen it would be entirely more adept than one of the most important names listed in the credits. I hope the writers (John Hamburg, Larry Stuckey, Greg Glienna, and/or Mary Ruth Clarke) responsible for this at least realize their mistake and feel some inkling of regret.
Oh yeah, and Alba seduces Stiller long enough for De Niro to get a peak of it and get the wrong idea, imagine that. The one original thing it did attempt to do was use Jack's CIA background to have him stalk Stiller, but instead of looking like a professional it just came off as amateurish and weak. Little Fockers is so bad that I now fear Meet the Parents was never actually a good movie, and that I was just going through some sad phase in my life that allowed me to enjoy it.
Overall Score: 4.75 – Terrible. (4s are terrible in many ways. They’re bad enough that even diehard fans of its genre, director, or cast still probably won’t enjoy it at all, and everyone else will leave the theater incredibly angry. Not only are these not worth renting, you should even change the TV channel on them in the future.)
It's sad when the funniest line in your comedy movie comes from a unknown actor who's only in the film for 5 seconds as a paramedic.
