12 September 2025

Little Fockers (Ben Stiller)

Meet the parents: Little Fockers (Ben Stiller)
(Amazon UK link)
Six months ago we watched the film ‘Meet the Fockers’, which I found inexpensively in a local thrift store. We liked it so much that I ordered (second-hand) the first and third in the series when I was in the UK.  We watched ‘Meet the parents’ last week, and thought it excellent. So we were looking forward to seeing the final film in the trilogy, ‘Little Fockers’, yesterday evening. 

The main characters are the same as in the other two films, and the chemistry between them is as good as ever. Ben Stiller is excellent as Greg Focker, a nurse who has other responsibilities in his hospital. He’s married, now, to Pam (Teri Polo) and they have twins, Samantha and Henry, who are nearly five. Samantha is considerably taller than Henry. Apparently the actress (Daisy Tahan) was eight in 2010 when the film was made, while Colin Baiocchi, who played Henry, was a year younger. 

There are several themes running through this film. Greg has bought a bigger house, which is undergoing some improvements, at least in theory. He is hoping to use it to host his children’s fifth birthday party, but work is going rather slowly, and it appears to be deteriorating rather than improving.

Kevin (Owen Wilson) who made cameo appearances in the other films, keeps cropping up in this one. He’s a caricatured egoist, talented in a ridiculous number of fields, with a lot of ex-lovers, including Pam. And he offers his mansion as an alternative venue for the birthday party.

Then there’s an attractive medical drug rep called Andi (Jessica Garber). She wants Greg to do some promotional videos and talks for a new sexual enhancement pill she’s promoting. She also, clearly, finds Greg very attractive although he has no idea… 

Meanwhile Pam’s father Jack (Robert De Niro)has been having some health problems, and wants to pass on responsibility for the well-being of the family to one of his sons-in-law. But the one he found more satisfactory has gone off with someone else, so he’s left with Greg. And they have a lot of ongoing stresses, despite quite liking each other underneath…

So there’s quite a bit going on in this film, and it’s mostly well-done. The actors, many of them well-known, are excellent and there are some amusing moments. But overall it didn’t feel entirely coherent. The subplots interweave, sometimes picking up on things in earlier films, sometimes introducing new elements. The title suggests that it should mainly be about Greg and Pam’s twins, but there are a lot of more ‘adult’ scenarios. 

The birthday party comes towards the end, as the climax to the film. But even that is more about Kevin and his talents than about Henry and Samantha. Greg’s parents are reunited after some time apart, and what goes on (in private) in one of the tents is definitely not child-friendly. Nor is the fist-fight that takes place between Greg and Jack - something that had been simmering for a while but which seemed to go on much longer than necessary. Some of it’s done for humour - they fight on the slide and in the ball pool, for instance - but it looks all too realistic. And there’s a very tense scene when Jack is taken ill again… something which I didn’t find at all funny.

I did like the fact that Greg and Pam really are committed to each other, and still love each other. The point is made that it’s not always easy to find time for romance when there are two young children in the house, and I thought that was well done. I also liked the final family scene which finishes the story nicely. But this is not a film for children; the 12 rating reflects the lack of anything explicit, although I would have thought that the fight and the fact that the name sounds like ‘strong’ language might have put it up to 15. 

I’m glad we saw this, but am also glad that it’s the last of the ‘Meet the parents’ trilogy. I think the humour between the two sets of in-laws has probably been done sufficiently. We watched some of the extras including an alternative beginning and ending which were amusing but, we thought, wouldn’t have worked as well as the actual start and finish. There are some other deleted scenes, a gag reel, and other extras which we didn’t see.

Review copyright 2025 Sue's DVD Reviews

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