Little Fockers Is Focking Terrible

Little Fockers, the third and, critics promise, worst movie of the Meet the Parents franchise, opens with an extended enema joke, and pretty much goes downhill from there. Here’s a healthy dose of the critical scorn being heaped on it:

• “I suffered through Little Fockers wishing that I could have periodontal surgery instead,” writes Andrew O'Hehir of Salon. It’s a collection of “creaky, homophobic gross-out gags that would make many eighth-graders roll their eyes in embarrassment.”

• The only picture of the year more vulgar, pathetic and unfunny was the one Brett Favre allegedly sent over his cellphone, quips Kyle Smith of the New York Post. It’s a movie “of such boundless ineptitude that I’d rather watch student films, or even Glee.”
• Yet ironically, it’s not tasteless enough. “The jokes get halfway there and wimp out with a crude little splat,” complains Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. It also suffers from egregious overacting from Jessica Alba. “It’s like she has to pee really badly in every one of her scenes.”
• “Rarely does a comedy bring such an overpowering sense of sadness,” writes James Berardinelli of ReelViews. Once, Robert De Niro was a truly great actor. But this movie “represents a new low … a level of embarrassment to which I never thought I would see him sink.”

(More Little Fockers movie review stories.)