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Little Fockers

Let's hope the little fockers know it's time to terminate this franchise.By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time,

Because there are no big issues at the Little Fockers house, little issues drown it in nonsense so that humor can barely breathe. Patriarch Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) thinks his problematic son-in-law, Greg (Ben Stiller),should be his heir to the "godfocker" role. Greg (previously in life named "Gay' for Gaylord) accepts and spends the rest of the film showing he is not qualified for the responsibility.

Thence come the pratfalls and pranks that comedies rely on for laughs when they lack the wit to laugh by lines. The most exciting but humorless action comes in the delicious form of Jessica Alba, a pharmaceutical rep bent on seducing Greg, a male nurse who could help her company promote a new erectile enhancing drug. Sadly already this year Love and Other drugs with Jake Gyllenhaal as the rep for a Viagra pill covered the erection action with a bit more verve.

When even Owen Wilson as flaky Kevin Rawley, admirer of Greg's wife, Pamela (Teri Polo), doesn't get as much as a smirk from me, then I know I am in an underachieving comedy. At least the dog in this movie does not masturbate (see Due Date); it just swallows a gecko. Not much funnier than one of the Focker kids puking at the dinner table. I need say no more.

The Focker franchise is lucrative, and Stiller, De Niro, and company are a talented bunch, so I am an optimist that their next reunion may hold an amusing concept with lithe lines. Not.  

John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com