REVIEW: Meet Little Fockers, the Threequel from Hell

I'm not saying the legacy of Meet the Parents deserved the protection of cinematic landmark status. But it does seem like a shame that what was there to protect has been ground into an unrecognizable pulp and reshaped into a grotesque of its former self. Who knows what kind of reputation the 2000 hit might have developed had well enough been left alone: A clever, well-cast execution of an old setup, it might have stood as a charming keeper, an example of that rare comedy that records a couple of memorable notes on the social anxieties of its time.

Meet the Fockers, the 2004 sequel, upped the ante by adding two more game performers to the mix; the novelty of Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as earthy, smoochy Jewish parents mixing with suburban Irish in-laws made the twist on the same premise passable. But this latest is grim stuff: Little Fockers hardly bothers with finding a reason to exist, although one might assume a focus on the abiding hilarity of life with small children. That assumption would be wrong. By now the franchise's motions are intuitive, as is the expectation that the audience is willing to go through them, limply, one more time.

Do we get the threequels we deserve? Might we look at this third installment as a mirror held up to the entertainment consumer? What, exactly, does it reflect? It's hard not to feel cynical -- like, Pirates of the Caribbean-cynical -- watching Little Fockers. The first of the three films not directed by Jay Roach (Paul Weitz, co-director of American Pie and About A Boy, took over) and scripted by a new team of writers, it's a bricolage of familiar moments -- from both the earlier two films and the past 30 years of lesser sitcoms -- that humps around the screen, hoping you might spare a laugh. Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and his wife Pam (poor Teri Polo) now have two young children and a hell of a time getting out the door in the morning. You know this opening sequence; with a couple of CGI head swaps they could have inserted the same scene from Date Night, or any number of family-friendly mainstream comedies.

The rest of the film uses similarly familiar shorthand as a substitute for both style and structure, and never pauses long enough to make much of any of its potential storylines: Life is busy, kids are hard on a couple, money is tight; life is awesome when a pharmaceutical rep who looks like Jessica Alba on a very good day walks into your office; life sucks when your in-laws come to visit. The middle one, which finds Alba ("amusingly" named "Andi Garcia") pursuing Greg first as a mark to represent her new male enhancement drug and then as fodder for her naturally raging libido, gets the most play. And yet Andi never poses a real threat, either to Greg or his marriage. Similarly, when playboy Kevin (Owen Wilson) arrives on the Fockers's doorstep, heartbroken and eager once again to show Greg up in every possible way, his enduring love for Pam is played off as the same harmless, worn out joke. The seven-year-itch scenario is at least plausible: Alba is absurdly attractive as the huggy, gushy single girl, and I know I'd be itchy if all my wife did was hover on the fringes of my slapstick life, looking horrified.

Robert DeNiro and Blythe Danner are back as Jack and Dina Byrnes, and though an effort is made to keep schticky spirits up, the actors are defeated by the material's oppressive, repetitive rhythms, which have crossed over from dull to demeaning. DeNiro delivering a depressing "Godfocker" tagline to camera? Or subjecting himself to a subplot stolen from Keeping Up with the Kardashians? Harvey Keitel as a dud contractor dressed like a bear at a gay bar? Streisand, Hoffman, and Tom McCarthy as little more than token cutaways? By the time Little Fockers stumbles into its climactic sequence -- a birthday party for the twins held at Kevin's ludicrous expense -- the fin de siècle atmosphere of careless excess and children grabbing what goodies and good times they can feels like a fitting final note. You can almost see the agents and studio suits just outside of frame, stuffing their insensible faces with cake.