Meet the Parents, No. 4 - Little Fockers (2010)

I trudged through the snow to see this?!

At least the popcorn was tasty.

No seasoned moviegoer expects much of Little Fockers; hell, no seasoned moviegoer goes to see Little Fockers, excepting idiotic blog projects. There is a remarkable pointlessness to such an exercise, a 6-years-late sequel that thus seems on a par with Rush Hour 3 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Add to that no more story left to tell – Ben Stiller’s neurotic Gaylord “Greg” Focker officially became a part of Robert De Niro’s Byrne family in Meet the Fockers – and we have a very, very unappetizing proposition.

Oh!, and add to that a change in directors…as though the prospects weren’t bleak enough already. Farewell Jay Roach, electing his mediocre comedy-directing talents were better needed by Dinner for Schmucks, that true artistic visionary he. Welcome Peter Weir – wait, no, that’s not right. Weir does good movies, like Picnic At Hanging Rock and Witness and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. No, no, no, I actually check the IMDb, and find Little Fockers focked forth from the PowerBook of Paul Weitz, whose sense of comedic brilliance is on full display in American Pie – Oh dear God!


All that bespeaks of scant faith in this dubious project, but the 6 year gap is really the result of the former Fockers’ ridiculously unwieldy cast, and the need to get them all back together again even while pointlessly adding a few new big names to the Focker roster as an added sequel incentive. And with the demanding schedules of mostly-retired elder actors at hand, they still couldn’t fashion a way to wisely use Dustin Hoffman or Barbara Steisand. The once-titular Fockers (that is, Gaylord’s loving parents and namers) recede into token appearances, easily not a part of the plot whatsoever. Hell, Hoffman hadn’t even intended to appear in this shit at all, until his inner hack got the better of him (eh, that or the promise he’d get to grope Jessica Alba onscreen – we’ll get to that).

Rather than wait for a more artful portion of this write-up, I’ll just recount the whole of this duo’s function…now!

Streisand’s Rosalyn Focker now has a syndicated daytime talk show called, if memory from like an hour ago serves, “Fock Sex Focker” or “Genital Chat With Rosalyn” or “Meet the Fockers” or “Rosalyn Focker’s Talk Show” or “Some Damn Thing” or whatever. Then she gets to show up for a single scene to share the screen with other actors, and to grope Owen Wilson onscreen – we’ll get to that.

Hoffman’s, ummm…Oh, right, he’s called Bernie! Bernie Focker is doing the flamenco in Spain! Well, that has just about nothing to do with anything! Then he appears in the U.S. long enough to grope Jessica Alba – I know I keep going back to that, but you gotta find something of value in such dreck.


That leaves mostly Stiller and De Niro to do a cheap replay of their conflict from the “original” (that is, a remake of the actual original) Meet the Parents. That is to say, De Niro’s Jack Byrnes suspects Stiller’s Greg is unworthy of being an in-law, investigates him using his Awesome CIA Powers, and Greg does stupid shit on a regular basis to unintentionally fuel Jack’s suspicions. And for all this to have any bearing, you gotta attribute a mighty pile of character arc-related plot amnesia.

You gotta also have a great big reason for Greg to once again wish to prove himself to Jack. Let’s see, first he needed to impress Jack so he could propose to his daughter (Teri Polo’s Pam, as bland a blonde plot motivator as ever). Second he needed to impress Jack so he could marry the pre-proposed Polo plot person. And now, he needs to impress Jack so…that he can impress Jack. Er, before Jack dies. (By the way, I desperately wanted this movie to end with at least one tombstone…I was sorely disappointed.)

There’s a bit more to it than that. Jack is concerned with his legacy, and wishes to unofficially anoint his successor as King of the Family or whatever. This has no relation to anything, so Greg’s obsession with earning the jacked-up title is just arbitrary. Oh, but the title does have a name: “Godfocker,” because did you really think something lazily christened Little Fockers could cease picking at that pestilent last name? And as an example of the film’s reduced comedic sensibility (that’s reduced even from Meet the Fockers), this title allows for a remarkably witless, movie-long pastiche on The Godfather. Because suddenly this comic franchise is in the pop culture referencing game, at least in regards to the classics of the ‘70s. (Also picked on: The French Connection and Jaws.)

With nothing riding on the story, which resolves itself like the last two anyway, we’re left with…the same jokes as before, not even explained unless you retain an encyclopedic, blogger-level familiarity with the former flicks. The exposition is equally awkward and presupposing, actually making this family comedy as complex as a Saw sequel. Though the movie does have a reduced sense of the vulgar, at least compared to Meet the Fockers…though we still get a reasonable amount of caca and weewee jokes. (The one joke that did make me titter postulates that a whoopee cushion “makes farts.” This is the level of wit we’re again dealing with.)


And to rag upon a series-wide issue: Frankly, Jack is right to hate Greg. Greg is a little wiener, a sub-Woody Allen nebbish with zero self-confidence or backbone. Consider, the Stiller-shaped dickface is incapable of functioning normally around Jack, so obsessed is he with appearing like someone he is not. You know, the urn-bursting, shit-smearing, cat-attacking antics are forgivable, but the endless, endless toadying is not. (Of course, Jack is a psychopath, and equally undeserving of our respect, so it’s just a geek show now, with “Three’s Company” plotting.)


But I’m forgetting some other characters (as is the film), in my rapt focus upon the comedy duo of De Niro and Whatsisname – and no, I don’t mean the unusable Blythe Danner, who is at least a very attractive 67-year-old. Let’s start with the “little” Fockers the title so insists we take an interest in. These are Greg’s (and Pam’s) 5-year-old twins, Henry and Samantha Focker (Colin Baiocchi – sounds like a potato dish – and Daisy Tahan – sounds like a human)…Actually, there’s not much to say about these two, for what are the chances of casting two 5-year-olds with the star power of Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand? They’re mostly here as plot motivators, for their fifth birthday party is the event which gets the various characters back together for one more film (a random birthday party is a poor substitute for a wedding, as far as premises go). That’s because the “Godfocker” thing alone is a lame hook for a movie.

About them…Samantha is…well, she’s smart. That’s all there is to her, since as a non-Barbara Streisand female in this franchise, the filmmakers have 0 interest in her.

Of Henry, he’s, uh, kinda dumb. Actually, maybe he’s retarded – you know, literally. Kinda a little Ben Stiller, actually. Also, he’s a chance for the movie to go the David Cronenberg route and expose the lad to as many awful body horror moments as they can think of: Henry pukes on his father, his father bleeds on him, he sees his father stab his grandfather in the erect penis with a syringe (I’ll get to that one – maybe), he falls down and breaks a bone when all else fails. About the years of therapy Henry will no doubt endure as an adult, they offer zero comment.

One other central notion the brats can contribute to (what, another thread?): Greg wants to get ‘em in school, specifically into the Early Humans School. Though it sounds like a touchy feely place like the Milford Academy, apparently the EHS is “the Harvard of kindergartens.” Hence the exact, specific, don’t-you-dare-do-anything-else choice of Jack Byrnes. And also a chance for Greg to horribly embarrass himself in a new setting, for what is this series but a chance for Ben Stiller’s character to horribly embarrass himself time and again? (And for the real Robert De Niro to do likewise – What would Travis Bickle say?)

The EHS is also a chance to put, like, a thirteenth name in the marquee: Laura “Blue Velvet” Dern as…you know, I ain’t lookin’ her character’s name up, though the Internet affords so much possibility. She offers little, but, well, female, Meet the Parents franchise, you know the drill. Useless.


Another marquee name, with a character serving no purpose: Harvey Keitel. Justifying this bit of casting no one is excited about, Greg is having a new house remodeled for the family, because his current palatial 4,000sf apartment is just too plebian. (Relatability!) Keitel is the contractor, and on screen for less time than Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love. Hmm, maybe he’ll win an Oscar!...Nah! Really, the whole Keitel/contractor subplot is just the chance for one scene, one scene where De Niro fights with him verbally. Back in the ‘70s or ‘80s, that would’ve meant something! But now, it all climaxes in a punch line (or sorts) where Greg dumps sand all over Jack – and with Mr. Jinx momentarily gone, hence the lack of a urination/shitting joke. That whole dumping (of sand) could’ve been avoided, had simply Jack, or Greg, or Keitel’s worthless character (Randy) used the bare minimum of common sense or communication. But had anyone here those skills, there’d be no movie.

One other reason (for the house remodel, not for Keitel): It serves as the stage for Jessica Alba-related groping, by Hoffman as well as Stiller, taking a break from his home life of groping Christine Taylor.

Oh right, I promised something about Jessica Alba, didn’t I? Well, for once they have a female character doing something worthwhile, if by “worthwhile” you mean “have a nice body and strip down to her underwear.” So, yes, worthwhile. Too bad about the acting skills, at least this time you don’t have to see her with Dane Cook (Stiller’s still there, sadly).


Alba “plays” Andi Garcia (yes, they lean on the obvious joke, and feature this very webpage), a drug rep seeking the sponsorship of Greg Focker the nurse – Yes, Greg Focker is still a nurse, some 6 in-movie years later, because that’s easier for the writers and less creative. Okay, so Alba (er, Andi – sigh) specifically peddles an erection pill called – I’m gonna get this wrong – Sproingo™ or Erect-U-Long™ or Boners ‘R’ We™ or Not Viagra™ or something. This would’ve been rejected in 2000’s Meet the Parents as being out-of-date. But not in 2010!

And yeah, it’s another subplot, another plot hook, another unrelated-to-anything-else bit of nonsense, because this movie ain’t the most immaculately constructed machine ever devised.

How is it that every comedy of this sort has a ridiculously hot-looking gal falling for a schlub like Stiller? And I mean “rape the male on a crowded bus” attracted to him. And the only justification is that Greg gives a mean enema – to someone who is not Alba. Making her insane.

Alright, so Alba is here to fuel Jack’s latest source of doubt – because things’d go smoothly otherwise. Short story: Jack thinks Greg is having an affair with the “Sexiest Woman in the World” (2007). Yeah right! All this is because Greg, in his monumental idiocy, is unwilling to tell Jack “I have accepted a lucrative one-time sponsor contract,” and is thus more content to let his father-in-law believe he is shtupping and whorenicating on the side. It’s farce, alright, of the sort where a single sentence could unravel 97 minutes of story! I don’t wanna expend any more effort dismantling the inadequacy of this plotline, because every time the brain thinks up a problem, Jessica Alba starts getting a little more naked. Damn the PG-13 rating!

Oh, and Jessica Alba is the reason (indirectly) for Robert De Niro’s raging hard-on, which has graced every commercial I’ve seen (online) for the movie. So that justifies that, and I hope to never again have to blog about Robert’s De Niro.


What else? Well, I don’t have notes to go off of for this one, so I guess it’s time to –

No, wait, Owen Wilson! You forgot about Owen Wilson! It is a Ben Stiller joint, after all.

How could I? Okay, so there’s Owen Wilson here for a third time as Kevin Rawley, Pam’s former fiancée from presumably like 1999 or earlier. I’m flabbergasted by the ways in which the filmmakers continue to justify bringing this guy back, since his central joke was rendered moot when Greg married Pam (along with most of the rest of the series). But Wilson’s there anyway, appearing suddenly in scene after scene like a beloved scene stealer in a sitcom. They don’t even try this time, man! For somehow Greg’s hated rival Kevin is also Greg’s best friend, and is host to the kids’ birthday party. (The party’s original site is presently a muddy ditch with a barely-clothed Jessica Alba in it – unsuitable for children.)

That’s where we leave Alba for good, her plot entirely unresolved at this stage – joining the illustrious ranks of all plotlines other than that deathless “Godfocker” thing. Then Greg and Jack punch each other, Greg does some nursing, heartfelt strings on the soundtrack cue me in on what emotion I’m supposed to be feeling, things end, I’m out!

Then I sneak in to watch a tiny bit of Season of the Witch. It is not good either.

Little Fockers is an underachieving bit of crap, being the sequel to the “highest grossing live action comedy of all time (in the United States).” But this thing’s gross is way down, meaning whatever Bush was putting in our water in 2004 is mostly gone now. Hell, there’s a bit of hope for moviegoers today, as (astoundingly, and wonderfully) a Coen Brother movie has outperformed a soulless blockbuster comedy – and True Grit is funnier than Little Fockers too, no matter True Grit is not a comedy, for that is the skill of the Coens, and I think I’m getting sidetracked by memories of a good movie. (Go see True Grit.)

Yup, Little Fockers doesn’t try. It’s not as gross or puerile as Meet the Fockers, nor as, dare I say, well constructed as Meet the Parents. It doesn’t even try for “heartfelt,” content to just sort of splat against the tarp screen in a dark and empty room. (I’m not even sure what that means.) I would surely like to say this is the end of this franchise once and for all. May the next one, should it happen, secure an R-rating, and get Jessica Alba back!

And get some tombstones, too, and maybe a maniac in a hockey mask, or something.

(I apologize for some of the non sequiturs above.)


Related posts:
• No. 2 Meet the Parents (2000)
• No. 3 Meet the Fockers (2004)

Meet the Parents, No. 3 - Meet the Fockers (2004)

There’s very little in Meet the Parents (2000 version…or 1992 for that matter) that suggests a franchise. As a one-off exploration of a single, specific event in one’s life (meeting your girlfriend’s parents), it was complete. Ah hah!, but also astoundingly successful. And with the little sequel-baiting line towards Parents’ end, about meeting the parents on the other side, well…Even as a joke, one doesn’t propose sequels lightly in a film’s ending. Such things lead to Back to the Future Part II (not a wholly awful result).

So, Meet the Parents 2 – no, wait, excuse me, Meet the FOCKERS, you see, for that reminds folk of that central over-used cuss word joke from the first – So, Meet the FOCKERS occurred 4 years later, a rather lengthy delay really, but such is possibly the challenge of getting MVPs Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro back together, what with schedules and all (what with Stiller being silly, and De Niro well into his prolific “just don’t give a crap” phase). And director Jay Roach returns too, meaning he needed to fart out the remainder of those Austin Powers movies first, while people still maintained the slightest degree of goodwill towards Mike Meyers.


The real challenge postponing Fockers was finding those ever-important Fockers, parents of Stiller’s immortal male nurse, Gaylord “Greg” Focker. Like that name, eh? Ya can’t recount Fockers without going Focker Focker Focker! (It’s the movie’s favorite joke, to no one’s shock. Focker!) And as De Niro’s Jack Byrnes was the WASP taskmaster par excellence, twas essential to find an equivalent pair of shrill, liberal Jews for the Focker homestead. Finding famous Jews in Hollywood?! That’ll be hard!

To their credit, the cast is great…on paper. Dustin Hoffman leads the new crew, as Bernie Focker. Not bad, as the man represents a certain generation of respected actors just as much as De Niro does (and has become just as lazy in his autumn years). Then, as Roz Focker (Focker Focker Focker!), they got Barbara Streisand, a notable coup as she’d apparently ceased acting entirely by then. But the draw of being a famous Focker, who could resist, eh? (Get it yet? “Focker” sounds like “Fucker,” but the MPAA can’t do anything about it. Oh the ribaldry!)

Focker!


Those two new big name stars are certainly the reason why the $55 million original jumped up to $80 million now, it being a supremely trying technical shoot, what with its one house setting and everything. (That’s, like, 5.5 Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragons, or fucking 160 Halloweens!) A thought occurs: Jay Roach is a poor moneyman.

Without Greg Glienna’s witty original to pilfer now (apart from one-off gags, now mistold), returning screenwriting ubermenschen Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg have to construct a scenario from whole cloth. And that’s without the universality of Meet the Parents’ parent-meeting premise. Oh sure, parents are met here, but future in-laws meeting doesn’t carry the same basicness as a girlfriend’s parents. Or maybe it’s because I’ve only done the latter myself.

So minus that promising notion to build upon, or Glienna’s good gaggery (for whatever damned reason, the true franchise mastermind has never been invited to do anything for the big budget efforts), Fockers simply goes the juvenile route. There were surely hints of this approach in Parents, with cats shitting and all, but Fockers seems simply an exercise to examine as many scatological, sexual, and otherwise off-putting notions as possible within the PG-13 rating (even the title plays into this). It becomes arbitrary, a cartoon, where Parents worked best because there was some truth to the awkward scenario it told. It’s as though the filmmakers simply listed out a number of scenes they wanted to do, then tried fashioning a scant narrative around them.

Add to that the exaggeration of the characters this time around. Jack Byrnes, that amalgamation of all the world’s worst fathers-in-law, has become nothing less than conservatism writ large, a mass of all the post-9/11 security mentalities and sexual inhibitions. This is needed because the Fockers have been carefully created to be the complete opposites of Jack in every way: liberal to a fault, essentially fucking everywhere they can at all times, emotionally open, it goes on. (Roz is even taken to uttering Jewish clichés at every turn, because to other Jews, this is apparently hilarious. As a Gentile, I’m at a loss…)


In Fockers, nothing is realistic, both sides simply cartoons of themselves. One no longer sees real families here, but bad walking gags performed well. Add to that the puerility, which never shocks as a combined result of the limited rating and its calculated nature, and Fockers’ focus falters.

Consider: Greg is taking Jack and Dina (oh, right, Blythe Danner is in all these, herself as forgotten as Polo) to Miami to meet his Focked up family. Desperate to impress Jack, with marriage to Pam imminent in Greg’s mind, he convinces his parents to hide their serial-fucking ways for the weekend. In the approach Parents employed, this would indeed happen, the nature of the Fockers emerging as a slow burn over time. Fockers’ Fockers are not that way. Their first scene pretty much demolishes those notions entirely, leaving Fockers to simply follow its depressing panoply of gross-out moments for a surprisingly overlong run time, then work out some stuff involving Greg towards the end so the usual unearned cloying ending can come about like clockwork.

Maybe it’s advisable to summarize Fockers as a mere list of vulgarities, for that’s clearly what it was for the disinterested people behind the camera:

There is a one-year-old baby, Little Jack, with a breast obsession. So whenever a big-boobed character is on screen, cue cutaways to the child cupping its hands and overacting like Jerry Lewis. It’s “funny” because he’s pre-sexual (and pre-verbal). As to whose baby this is, well, it’s Deb and Bob’s, newlyweds from Part One who don’t even appear in this movie at all. But their baby is there, for some exceedingly poorly exposited reasons (they’re in Thailand doing whatever), mostly because the filmmakers wanted an excuse to do some baby jokes.

And that baby’s age, etc., indicates it’s been at least 2 years since the events of Parents (in-film, that is; it’s been 4 years in actuality, for as odd as Teri Polo now looks). That means, despite his previous proposal, Greg’s been waiting 2 years to marry Pam, with the wedding still six months away. All these factoids vomited out so we can accept the central notion, that this’ll play as much like the first as possible, only with more Fockers.

But right, I got sidetracked from a listing of filthiness…

Focker!


Jack has invented a false wearable breast, a “manary gland” in fact, so he can breastfeed young Little Jack. The excuse given is Jack’s obsessive Ferber Method – for Jack is the kind of anal retentive who plans everything to the nth degree, which is why it’s so easy for Greg to inadvertently foil his schemes again and again. This is a Jack so sexually uptight, he’s probably only had sex three times (as evidenced by his three children). This emotionally constipated Jack wears a molded, lifelike breast on a regular basis, for weakly-stated reasons – because they had another boob joke they wanted to squeeze in, as it were.

Then when we meet Bernie Focker, he talks at length about having only one testicle. How this Jew can avoid referencing Hitler, who’s to say?

Roz’s profession, meanwhile, is as a sex therapist to the elderly. The general fact of this is to allow her an excuse to elaborate upon sex at length at any given moment (not inherently a problem, but when it’s all been constructed merely for the lulz, forgive me from not tittering like a schoolboy). In the short term, though, it’s a chance for a sight gag involving numerous old people dry humping each other, because old people having sex = teh funnies.

Briefly, Bernie indicates to everybody that he regularly does not flush his feces. Nice.

At the dinner table, Greg’s parents feel the need to prattle on at length about his botched circumcision. Because unrelated dialogue separates portions of this discussion, is gives the movie MPAA deniability to then describe Greg’s deformed penis at length, with artful metaphors involving turtles, helmets, you know, common penile terms. It’s brazen, but not clever. It’s no “South Park.”

As a break from penis time, the Fockers elaborate upon Greg’s loss of his virginity, which happened at 19 to their housekeeper Isabelle (Alanna Ubach). This apparently happened back in Detroit, but Isabelle and her big boobs are here in Miami now to, er, titillate Little Jack. There’s greater importance to Isabelle, but for now it’s just another random bit of distaste.

Then it’s back to the penis! For Roz has saved Greg’s mangled, dried-out old foreskin in a book all these years, because that’s who the Fockers are. Just like all families, right?! The foreskin finds its way into the fondue (bris in the brie)…You know, screw PG-13, this movie is one step away from Dead Alive! I find the gleeful, disgusting puke sequences of something like The Meaning of Life hilarious, but this is just witless and gross!

Little Jack maybe says his first word. Oh no, it was just a fart. Got that function checked off the list!


Oh, I nearly forgot, the Fockers have themselves a humping dog, Moses! The sex-happy mutt’s main function is to supply random visual gags when nothing else overtly awful is on hand.

The dog is also there to act as a foe to Jinx, because of course Mr. LJ “Jinxy,” Jack’s prized Himalayan, has come down to Florida, it being the prime source of bowel jokes in Part One. In a moment more slapstick than foul, the dog and cat duel like Looney Tunes in Jack’s RV, which is also there. The dog is flushed down the toilet (sans feces, thank the Heavens), which is almost amusing, because…Glienna’s 1992 version included a dog drowning. This is likely a pilfering of that.

Otherwise, eventually the animals make their peace – through fornication. Moses, the hump-master, actively sodomizes Mr. Jinx in front of the baby, and likely plants an unwanted seed that would later bloom in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Not good.

The elder Fockers have incredibly loud, long, boisterous foreplay involving whipped cream and Barbara Streisand’s various genitalia. Because it remains off screen, and mostly in unsubtle double entendre (“rug” and “lawn” = too sideways for the MPAA to grasp), it passes in this movie…I just figured out where the $80 million went! Bribing the censors!

As a break, Roz takes Dina aside for conversation. She says both “sperm” and “semen,” which again isn’t a problem, except we’re so obviously meant to laugh at those words’ utterances, as though we were all 13-year-olds shoving our fingers through our zippers in the classroom.

Back to the illicit dog-cat interspecies fuck fest. As this goes on, the baby gets its hands on a bottle of rum, and also watches Scarface. This is just comedic flailing, an assortment of “risqué” things to involve a baby in, plopped down in the film without sensibility. And this is the moment that gets Greg back in Jack’s bad graces (making me think the movie was more over than it was, the damnably long thing!), so too bad it wasn’t more believable.

Okay, now Little Jack has learned his first word, and it isn’t flatulence. No, it’s the cuss word studies show can be uttered indefinitely in a PG-13 movie, with no repercussions, allowing repetition ad nauseum: “asshole.” A baby saying “asshole.” Consistently for the next 40 minutes. Wit.


Also, they’d planned a scene where Barbara Streisand “massages” Robert De Niro, in a way which mostly resembles back sodomy. There’s no ultimate point to this scene, or explanation for it, so it’s perfectly at home in Fockers.

The climax nears, and plot rears. Jack suspects Greg may have sired a child with Isabelle 15 years ago – Jorge, the most Ben Stiller-looking Latino in the world. At a beach house soiree filled with “dancing Fockers,” Jack clues Greg in on this. But this isn’t enough, though. To ensure Greg tells the truth, Jack injects him with a truth serum that –

Okay, hold on! Focker!

Jack’s former CIA profession came up in Meet the Parents, where it was mostly treated as a calculated exaggeration of the dreaded father-in-law. This job served a purpose there, allowing for some slightly less believable jokes about polygraph machines and the like as a result. But in Fockers, where there isn’t such a focus, Jack’s job is merely another cartoon detail. Consider, we’ve already seen a high-tech hideaway underneath the bed in his RV, a control station to make any Bond villain envious. This serves no purpose, but to prepare audiences for the poorly-crafted world where truth serums can be broken out with as much ease as in Kill Bill, Vol. 2.


The result, once Greg is hopped up on the plot juice, is to go Liar Liar, which is doubly painful considering this franchise’s one-time flirtation with Jim Carrey. It is profoundly not funny, and Stiller’s everyman disappears behind a veil of Carrey-esque mannerisms which totally do not suit the actor. (Here they can check off all those naughty topics so far untouched, such as masturbation.)

With this “highlight,” Meet the Fockers goes the way of all mainstream comedies, and becomes an unfunny and just plain bad drama at the end. Despite a preoccupation with the butt and the cock and the nipple, Fockers wishes to be heartwarming and reassuring, so people leave feeling “good.” Ugh! mainstream humor! That means everyone must love each other at the end…at least, until another sequel resets that.

Somewhat uniquely, the main arc this time is Jack’s, as it is clear he’s been the major asshole the whole time (as Little Jack points out). He drives off alone in the RV, as Greg and Bernie rush to recreate the conditions for Parents’ finale. And because it’s now after 9/11, and badmouthing the airline industry is no longer acceptable, they have a contextless and aggression-filled run-in with a traffic cop. This leads to tazing humor, and Meet the Fockers reminds me how bad this stuff normally is, and how amazing it is that The Hangover handled the same joke with such aplomb (now that is how you do a potty joke movie!).


These events lead to Jack, Greg and Bernie all behind bars, mostly because that’s how world-class farce Bringing Up Baby climaxed. Never mind that’s the worst part of Bringing Up Baby, people still feel the need to recreate it, for its “energy.” So now Jack and Greg have that heart-to-heart we knew was coming. There was much rejoicing.

Just to assure filmdom’s longest non-Pirates of the Caribbean engagement period come to an end, they conclude with Greg and Pam’s wedding. Weddings always work to soothe the sappier audience members, which make up the majority of viewers for a middlebrow effort like this. As one final joke, the presiding minister is Owen Wilson (it wouldn’t be a Ben Stiller joint otherwise…), who performs much of the ceremony in Hebrew, simply because – again – anything Jewish is supposedly automatically funny to others of the Jewish persuasion. What is that all about?

I critique Meet the Fockers for having no voice, for playing like a Frank Capra movie at the end even while it has the urge to be “Family Guy” for much of its running. This mustn’t have been a problem to the general public, however, because for whatever thoroughly unfathomable reason, Fockers almost doubled the box office take of its predecessor, taking in half a billion dollars! Astounding, as I know nobody who’s seen this movie! (Whereas my friends can quote underperformers like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.)

The thing about most filmgoers is that they are not film lovers, not in the sense of people who rewrite The Big Lebowski into Shakespearean verse. They do not seek out a film for its longevity, or rewatchability. They simply want something that’ll go down easy, entertain well enough, not challenge them in any significant way. This is the same mentality which rewards things like Grown Ups (hell, Adam Sandler as a whole – his artsy efforts aside), which shuns experiments such as Grindhouse. This is angering. But enough of this Focking movie! I’m off to the cinema, to watch – shudder! – Little Fockers. May this all end for me soon.

Focker!


Related posts:
• No. 2 Meet the Parents (2000)
• No. 4 Little Fockers (2010)

Meet the Parents, No. 2 - Meet the Parents (2004)

Remakes (usually) count towards a franchise’s entry count, so Meet the Parents (the franchise) squeaks under our consideration – just barely. (What joy.)

This is because the original Meet the Parents was an independently filmed 1992 comedy, written by, directed by, and starring Greg Glienna. What’s that? You’ve never heard of this? Well there’s a good reason for that. For while Glienna’s Meet the Parents was received quite positively by critics, it was also targeted by for immediate remaking – just as Hollywood does with all good movies not of Californian origin. Like so many a foreign masterpiece due up for a purposeless English version, studios fought successfully to ensure Meet the Parents would never be seen again, or even be given a minor theatrical release (beyond what it already saw).


This is why we start with the big budget, 2000 Meet the Parents. And why a remake? There must’ve been some really groundbreaking concept underlying Glienna’s movie…

An unlucky guy meets his girlfriend’s parents, shenanigans ensue.

Why, that’s a universal concern, something nearly everyone knows! It makes sense for this to be a comedy, but it seems odd you’d need to secure rights to an unknown indy movie to do so. Unless Hollywood types are so far removed from common human existence, they don’t know about things like “meeting parents” or “family get-togethers” or any of that. Yeah, that sounds likely!

Still, a $100,000 movie becomes a $50 million movie, even while the remake features barely anything beyond a few well-toned houses, and no action sequences. That’s 500 times the budget, for no good reason! Of course, the Hollywood moviemaking machine is a lugubrious process, inherently money-hungry when done at the fullest studio level, subject matter be damned.

Still, why bury Glienna’s greatest effort ever, in order to make a film about such a standard notion? Well, it happens there were good jokes in Glienna’s Meet the Parents, and that’s something you can’t get by simply throwing money around. So Hollywood threw money around, bought Glienna’s gags and framework (to avoid the plagiarism this otherwise implies), then set about a ridiculously lengthy 8-year process doing their version. How does this take so long?!

Well, it seems everyone wanted a hand at fouling up Glienna’s jokes with millions of dollars. Steven Soderbergh was considered, but he bowed out to do Out of Sight instead – good call. Then none other than Stephen Spielberg considered the project, and we know how he handles comedy. Given Spielberg’s obsession with smaltzy family worship, it’s likely he intended to transform Glienna’s misanthropic anti-marriage black comedy into a sugary screed on American values and s- Excuse me, I think I just vomited a little. Audiences dodged a bullet on that one, for Spielberg’s flick would’ve included Jim Carrey, a comic grotesque whose style surely doesn’t mesh with anything like “slice of life.”

There are so many wrongheaded and jaded notions in its production, it’s a wonder 2000’s Meet the Parents is halfway decent. Now helmed by comedic up-and-comer Jay Roach (trying his hand at something more character-driven than his Austin Powers movies), Meet the Parents earns most of its value from a good cast. Ben Stiller plays the put-upon boyfriend, in the best version of his “comic everyman” character (as opposed to his favored “insane nutcase” character – see Zoolander and Tropic Thunder). As Stiller’s costar, the girlfriend’s father gets all the meat, as essayed by Robert De Niro. Not a noted comic performer (despite being The King of Comedy), the late ‘90s saw De Niro essentially cease to care – at least about Scorcesian-style drama. Following Analyze This’ comic “breakthrough,” De Niro used i to trade on his tough guy reputation to humorous end. It’s the sort of pairing movies Hollywood always tries to come up with, and regularly fail at.


The rest of the cast recedes compared to these two, especially the women. As “the girlfriend” (that is, plot motivator), they’d originally considered Naomi Watts, until she was deemed “not sexy enough.” Yeah, right! The logical processes of Hollywood, sometimes they completely stymie me. Instead, this thankless role goes to Teri Polo – who hasn’t otherwise particularly earned a name for herself.

If Meet the Parents 1992 was about the weekend-from-hell, the shiny, futuristic, Twenty-First Century Meet the Parents upgrades that to the wedding-from-hell. Not only is Greg the Jewish Schlemiel going to meet Pam Byrnes’ disapproving parents, Jack and Dina. No, now it’s a part of her sister’s wedding – Deborah (Nicole DeHugg) and Dr. Bob (Thomas McCarthy). And also Pam’s ex-fiancée, played by Owen Wilson, because you can’t have a Ben Stiller comedy without Owen Wilson. This raises the stakes (the wedding, not Owen Wilson). Greg can inadvertently destroy a whole ceremony (or at least its preliminary events), as a cavalcade of escalating lies and little problems (hidden cigarettes, relationship status) mounts to punish Greg.

Jack, the fatherly taskmaster, is himself a ridiculous caricature of family values. Resolutely Protestant and old-fashioned, Jack subtly rules his brood with an iron hand. Greg is the sole figure to lash out against it, but one gets the sense that all are somewhat terrorized by the man. In all, Jack is an amalgamation of the worst traits one could imagine in a girlfriend’s father – and as Robert De Niro, he holds all the authority. (Jack gets maybe a slight arc, but he exists mostly as an obstacle for Greg.) And not only is Jack played by a famous tough guy, but he’s an ex-CIA interrogator – an exaggeration, sure, but one that informs the scenario.

Meet the Parents’ humor comes from certain areas. It is not gag-driven, but in intent something closer to the French farce – an intricate machine of misunderstanding and compounded foolishness, where the plot is the joke. This is an exceedingly difficult form to do, so unsurprisingly Meet the Parents does not quite meet that standard. Still, there is a general structure of setting up future payoffs, even with unrelated scenes in between, which makes the eventual jokes seem more intelligent than they really are.


Consider the obvious setup of a vase containing grandmother’s ashes. It takes absolutely zero predictive capabilities to anticipate this urn’s destruction. And yet it’s only at the end of a very leisurely scene that said destruction happens – as Greg opens a champagne bottle. This bottle itself got an earlier scene devoted to its purchase, so that’s set up. And Jack’s precious cat Mr. Jinx has already been shown to be a reconstructed litter defecator. So it’s entirely in-context when Jinx pisses all over grandma’s remains. In the end, this endless scene is dedicated to a cat’s bowel movements (which in the context of most 2000 comedy actually seems tasteful), making the intelligence of the comedy somewhat suspect.


That’s not even getting into all the effort Meet the Parents takes to establish the Byrnes’ suspect downstairs toilet. Scene upon scene is dedicated to this appliance, many of those moments laboring to set up a visual gag wherein Jinx now craps here. (This movie is singularly obsessed with the cat’s butthole.) All this effort for a scene where the Byrnes’ lawn is covered in shit. And then everybody gets covered in the shit. At a wedding rehearsal – and it’s only the surrounding details, the wedding and the setup, which elevate this shit joke even slightly.

The other side of Meet the Parents’ humor is more sophisticated, since it doesn’t merely expend ridiculous effort upon scatology. Rather, Meet the Parents nicely predicts the ‘00s’ trend of discomfort humor (distinct from gross-out humor). Think “The Office” (UK), or “The Office” (US), or probably something else I cannot think of.

The gist is this: Greg is a pariah in Jack’s tight knit family, a Jew amongst WASPs (Wikipedia makes a huge deal out of this point, as apparently “Jewishness in a Hollywood movie” is a big deal), middleclass amongst upper-class, nurse amongst doctors (Greg is a male nurse, allowing the film’s opening joke concern catheters – ha ha ha!). These people essentially hate him, or at best disregard him, often in the most subtle and condescending ways. This is Parents’ character comedy, a parade of humiliations for Greg – and it hits way too close to home!

Making Greg feel genuinely, relatably miserable is this film’s raison d’être. There’s so much stilted awkwardness in his interactions with Pam’s family. It is very easy to find the cruelty in all this very not funny, but it’s a matter of taste. Skill is needed to effectively convey such a realistic situation, and still make comedy the obvious intent. To Meet the Parents’ infinite benefit, this comic mode permeates the entire running time, and isn’t dependent upon distinct gags or laugh moments to be effective. Thus squirmy, uncomfortable laughter of recognition propels Meet the Parents past its chunky feces moments, or its stilted setups – and all this comes from the leads’ performances, especially Stiller’s. They simultaneously sell the film’s believability and comic fantasy at once.


This mode finds its highpoint in the film’s centerpiece (if the posters are to believed), a scene where Jack hooks Greg up to a polygraph machine – you know, a lie detector. It’s the “girlfriend’s father” situation boiled down to its essence, yet made ridiculous. It’s all squirming, and nervousness, and – and – and it’s over way too fast! For once, a scene ends early, and goes nowhere, at just the moment ripest for milking (as opposed to cat milking, something else Meet the Parents addresses, because it is obsessed with that damn cat’s glands). The writing lets the actors down, but the actors do OK – and this scene is Stiller and De Niro alone, nothing else!


But then there’s Greg’s name. His last name is Focker. It’s funny, see, because it’s one letter different from “Fucker!” Ooh, filthy! Like cat excrement, or some such! Apparently, such a notion comes of the Jim Carrey days, and boy does Meet the Parents lean on “Focker” at every damn moment it can! It is funny at first (“Are you a pothead, Focker?”), but it loses so very much of its power with repetition, for it seems at time the filmmakers trusted nothing else but the name to be humorous. (To say nothing of the sequels.) And the punch line? Greg’s real first name: Gaylord. Poor fucking guy.


Of course, this comedy of humiliation works best in the familial setting, where Greg is the outsider. Eventually the movie deigns to broaden Greg’s carnival of misery, once he’s already earned ostracization from his potential in-laws. Here the airline industry is lampooned, at length, during the climactic moments when we expect they ought to be most fully be concerned with the Greg vs. Jack show. (They can’t continue with that vein, sadly, for this Meet the Parents – unlike Glienna’s – seeks a happy ending, and reacceptance for Greg. For the heartwarming.) So Greg’s unending tirades at airplane staff (and their nearly pathological mistreatment of him) seem unrelated to the film’s central premises. Now the universe is out to discomfort him. Oddly still, as a film from 2000, it didn’t take long for this portrayal of air travel to lose all pertinence. They show it as over-zealous and paranoid now, but in less than a year…


There isn’t much point to examining Meet the Parents the way I’d like, as it relates to Glienna’s original. That just leaves it (for now) as a one-off comedy, of an exceedingly basic premise, performed well enough and written…more iffily. In the context of 2000, where American Pie’s titular pie-fucking ruled as the zenith of American comedy, Meet the Parents must’ve seemed a most subtle creation – shit-lawn and cat nipples and all. And amazingly for such a careful construction, Meet the Parents proved surprisingly popular – largely due to audiences responding to the inherent promise in the Stiller/De Niro team-up. A $330 million gross is nothing to sneeze at, especially for a comedy – a genre not known to play as well theatrically, or globally.


For all its unpleasant pariah humor, Meet the Parents is a resolutely conservative picture, with a feel-good ending and a favorable view towards the institutions it purports to mock. No doubt much mainstream love for the flick comes of that fact, as it’s ultimately reassuring even when playing the rebel. And let’s see…Wedding Crashers, The Hangover, it seems you must have a wedding to have a successful comedy most of the time. It appeals to the widest spectrum of audiences, even while I hear no one today debating the merits of Meet the Parents (and that’s even with a sequel in theaters!). It doesn’t stick with you for long, the way everyone I know can quote financial duds like The Big Lebowski endlessly, but in theaters this mediocre approach works wonders (financial wonders).


Related posts:
• No. 3 Meet the Fockers (2004)
• No. 4 Little Fockers (2010)