Little Fockers (2010)

The third, and final (and I assume it is going to stay that way), instalment in what we can now refer to as the Fockers trilogy, Little Fockers is a perfect example of something perfectly competent, yet also perfectly in line with the law of diminishing returns.

All of the main cast members return. Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and Pam (Teri Polo), his wife, now have some children of their own, and father/grandfather Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) visits to discuss the potential of making Greg the next family patriarch. This comes about after Jack has had a "mild" heart attack, the timing is as bad as it can be, making things more stressful for Greg as he tries to juggle a number of different responsibilities.

Paul Weitz takes over the directing duties, a talented director in the field of comedy who I wish would recapture the touch he had when dealing with 3/4 of his first four movies, and he seems to be happy enough to go through the motions set out by the script, written by a returning John Hamburg, and Larry Stuckey (who was an associate producer on the previous instalment). That wouldn't be so bad if the script had any life to it, but it's almost as if everyone knows they used up all of the gags in the first two movies. All that is required is to get everyone into place, to set up a couple of comic misunderstandings, and to let the actors all do their thing. And that's what happens. It's not funny. It's not entertaining. It's just dull. Really dull. It's even worse when it sets up obvious strands that don't play out to anywhere near their full comic potential (such as potential chemistry between the lead and a character played by Jessica Alba).

What saves it from being completely unwatchable is the cast. Although the leads look like they could sleepwalk through the whole film, and some might say they do, there's still some fun to be had from just watching De Niro and Stiller play off one another. Polo and Danner are sidelined even more here than they were in the previous films, Hoffman and Streisand are also underused, and the same can be said for a returning Owen Wilson, as well as newcomer Alba. The second instalment in the series added more characters in the mix, but at least it had things for them to do. This one just hopes that having enough names in the cast list will distract from the . . . redundancy of it all.

Everybody knows how easily pleased I am, it's clear from most of my reviews, as well as the fact that I repeat that statement often enough, and I know that I enjoyed both Meet The Parents and Meet The Fockers more than most people. So you should probably bear that in mind when deciding whether or not to give your time to this, a relatively innocuous mainstream comedy that somehow made me determined not to seem too generous with my rating of it. It's the epitome of Hollywood laziness from start to finish.

3/10

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