Meet the Parents: Little Fockers (2010)

Directed by: Paul Weitz | 98 minutes | comedy | Actors: Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Jessica Alba, Owen Wilson, Harvey Keitel, Laura Dern, Barbra Streisand, Teri Polo, Blythe Danner, Daisy Tahan, Rob Huebel, Lei’lah Star, Colin Baiocchi, David Pressman, Robert Miano, Liam Ferguson, Sergio Calderón, Robbie Tucker, Christina Gabrielle, Nicole Pano, Hash Patel, Kat Kramer, Devin Williamson, Justin Verstegen, Duke Dlouhy, Selena Johnson, Germaine Mozel Sims, David Williams, Daniel Cage Theodore

Long ago, the name Robert De Niro stood for quality. In the seventies, eighties and early nineties he stringed together the masterly roles. With a body of work that includes classics such as ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976), ‘Raging Bull’ (1980) and ‘Goodfellas’ (1990), you can rightly call yourself one of the best actors of your generation. The contrast with De Niro’s work of the last fifteen years is therefore enormous. Because since the mid-nineties – ‘Heat’ (1995) is perhaps the last real highlight – the once grandiose actor has been muddling along in bland comedies, lackluster thrillers and one-sided action films. A parody of his earlier roles, such as he played in the comedy ‘Analyze This’ (1999), is still a nice idea, but it’s starting to look like he can’t do anything else – and won’t! – play. Most frustrating for fans of his earlier work, De Niro doesn’t even seem to mind that he is single-handedly destroying his reputation.

In ‘Meet the Parents: Little Fockers’ (2010), De Niro stars for the third time as Jack Byrnes, the frustrated ex-CIA agent who gets into a fight with his son-in-law Greg Focker (Ben Stiller). When confronted with the fact that he doesn’t have eternal life, Jack decides that Greg is the only one eligible to take the role of paterfamilias (“Godfocker”) from him. However, he doubts Greg will be able to carry that heavy burden. In order to be able to offer sufficient financial means in any case, Greg decides to accept a lucrative business proposal, in which he has to sell a new type of erection pill. Jack doesn’t trust the business, especially when he discovers that Greg is working with the beautiful sales representative Andi Garcia (Jessica Alba) on his ‘snack’. With the fifth birthday of Greg and Pam’s twins (Teri Polo) approaching, other old acquaintances also resurface. Among them are Greg’s sex-crazed parents (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand) and the wealthy but floaty family friend Kevin (Owen Wilson), who still seems to have a crush on Pam.

The first part of the ‘Meet the Parents’ franchise (2000) was not that crazy after all. The neurotic Greg Focker comes face to face with his father-in-law from hell, which resulted in some nice confrontations. In the sequel, ‘Meet the Fockers’ (2004), Greg’s floating parents came into the picture. That turned out a lot less well, although the film was a resounding success financially. After two parts all the jokes about the name ‘Focker’ would have been made, you would think. In ‘Little Fockers’, however, they simply repeat themselves. Jokes that have by now had their best days are brought up again. And so we are confronted with the painful image of De Niro with a bulge in his pajama bottoms, because he couldn’t stay away from the erection pills that Greg is trying to sell. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, because ‘Little Fockers’ is full of this kind of underpants fun. Real jokes are hardly to be seen. It doesn’t get any funnier than the name joke with Andi/Andy Garcia. It remains remarkable that many top actors (including Harvey Keitel for a useless cameo) lend themselves to this kind of nonsense. Dustin Hoffman actually didn’t want to participate at all, because he didn’t think the script was good enough. Apparently he couldn’t resist the bag of money that was presented to him to win him over (although he wisely limits his contribution to just a few scenes). The cake was actually finished after ‘Meet the Parents’, because how many jokes can you make about a neurotic and his terrorizing father-in-law? Yet a second and now even a third film was made, to fully milk the less and less funny confrontations. The script, which was cobbled together by four different writers, hangs together like loose sand, so that the film relies too much on the interaction between De Niro and Stiller. But that too is only mediocre, so that ‘Little Fockers’ can only put up a few trump cards. Or it has to be the impressive cast on paper, but in practice it only makes an uninspired impression.