Sunday, December 26, 2010

Review: 'Little Fockers' is Focked up

(EW.com) -- Is it time to get the Fockers out of here? I don't mean to rush Gaylord, er, ''Greg'' (Ben Stiller); Greg's laid-back Jewish parents, Bernie and Roz (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand); or his uptight gentile in-laws, Jack and Dina Byrnes (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner), now that they're all together again in "Little Fockers."

I dug the crazy clan a decade ago in "Meet the Parents" and enjoyed the bawdy Roz and Bernie show six years ago in "Meet the Fockers." But comedy has changed. Jack can only give his son-in-law the stink eye so many times before the whole ''I'm watching you'' pantomime gets stale.

And when a wink-wink movie is reduced to the alleged hilarity of a little boy accidentally observing his father inject his grandpa's penis (O poor Bobby D!) -- the old guy, having gobbled some erectile-dysfunction pills, is stuck with one of those supposedly hilarious, actually dangerous Viagra-esque side effects so recently not funny in "Love & Other Drugs" -- well, it may be time to try another household for laughs.

The importance of adult male responsibility in the development of the next generation (represented by the two little Fockers who now call Greg, Daddy) is the substantive portion of this drearily coarsened sequel. (Director Paul Weitz replaces former Focker coach Jay Roach.)

But who's kidding whom: "Little Fockers" is much less interested in parental guidance than it is in gamy whoopee. Jessica Alba shows up as a babe of a flirtatious drug rep who turns crude and feral-horny when she too swallows ED pills. Streisand's Roz offers graphic sex advice. And in the melee, Hoffman casually steals the picture in his few scenes, sometimes just with the flamenco moves Bernie has learned in his Spanish dance class. How Focked up is that?

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