How to handle a pesky father-in-law

MANILA, Philippines - Little Fockers, after the Metro Manila Film Festival, might as well have been a Filipino movie. Its setting, events and personalities are no different from what we have in Filipino households, where the in-laws provide unsolicited advice to their children’s married life and family, sometimes to the consternation of those involved. Easy identification with the characters and happenings in the movie make Little Fockers a great pleasure to watch.

Little Fockers revolves around the preparations leading to the 50th birthday party of the latest additions to the Focker household, the twins. Gaylord “Greg” Focker (Ben Stiller) and Pam Byrnes-Focker (Teri Polo) are content with their own lives as they raise normal, mischievous twins. Greg is a successful manager whose preoccupation and devotion as a nurse he enjoys tremendously. His life revolves around work and family, and he is fully satisfied with this routine. He does not expect that his life will become topsy-turvy with the visit of his father-in-law for the twins’ birthday celebration.

Enter Robert de Niro as Greg’s father-in-law, a control freak and retired FBI bigwig, enjoying life’s sunset years with his wife, Dina (Blythe Danner). After a mild heart attack, De Niro decides to pass the mantle of leadership of the family to Stiller as a family tradition. He pressures Stiller and puts him through several tests. Father-in-law uses his sleuthing skills to track son-in-law’s whereabouts. Father-in-law suspects that son-in-law is having an affair with the stunning and very aggressive medical representative Jessica Alba. Alba tries to seduce Stiller, but Stiller refuses. Unbeknownst to them, the seduction scene is witnessed by father-in-law. This is one of the most hilarious parts of the movie.

Kevin (Owen Wilson), Stiller’s buddy and who, in past Focker movies was madly in pursuit of Pam, is a comic in his own right. Now a peripatetic entrepreneur, who offers Greg and Pam the ideal home paradise, he joins the birthday party to entertain the kids and guests and shows Pam and her parents why he, and not the loser, Stiller, is deserving of Pam. He even has a tattoo of Pam’s face on his back. How he has to explain this to all is another funny segment in the movie.

De Niro and Stiller are the zany mainstays in the movie. How they complement one another as warring in-laws makes the movie doubly worth seeing. A scene where Jack takes a virility pill Sustengo he finds in Greg’s med rep bag showcases De Niro’s deadpan comic skills, and how Stiller comes to rescue him from an embarrassing situation, spells the duo’s versatility at proper timing to execute the scene. I loved how De Niro mixed anger, helplessness and frustration in his acting moments such as this.

The introduction of Alba as the temptress medical representative is a welcome addition and lets surface Stiller’s firm resolve to remain a faithful husband. Notably good actors, like Harvey Keitl as the contractor of Greg and Pam’s new house, and Laura Dern, as the head of Early Human School, are not given enough exposure, just like Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand, as Stiller’s hippie parents, who have very short, almost token, appearances. Their presence in the film is unexplored and makes one wonder why there had to be so many stars with so little to do.

Little Fockers is a movie full of slapstick and dirty comedy. But with award-winning actors De Niro, Streisand and Hoffman, who all act so naturally, and the consistently never-disappointing Stiller, it could be one of the best comedies for 2011. There may be too many characters, but it’s worth the time spent in the movie house for a couple of laughs, and an appropriate transition to groove us back to patronizing foreign movies once again.

(E-mail me at [email protected] or text 0927-5000833)