Tag Archives: Little Fockers

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On The Couch #47: Fred Claus

It was a two-fer of Vince Vaughn movies on Saturday. First I caught early Vince Vaughn in Rudy and then I watched some more recent Vince Vaughn in Fred Claus.

What Fred Claus really wants for Christmas is to look once more like he did in Rudy.

When I was taking screenwriting classes, I had the bright idea that the best movie to write from a purely financial standpoint would be a Christmas movie. If it’s any good, it will have good sales year after year on DVD and be syndicated to kingdom come. Write a hit Christmas movie and then sit back and let the royalty checks pour in every December.

The idea I came up with in class was for a movie about Santa’s brother. The guy would be the opposite of Santa in every way possible and would have the goal of ruining Christmas, like the Grinch, but on a worldwide scale. I never got past a paragraph long story idea for it. The makers of Fred Claus did a much better job with the Santa’s brother concept than my paltry idea could ever hope to achieve. It’s a very cute Christmas movie and I really enjoyed watching it.

I think one of Fred Claus’s strengths is that it made Fred a sympathetic character right from the start. Young Nicholas Claus is very similar to Own Wilson in Little Fockers. He means well and is always doing good deeds, but he doesn’t quite get how his actions, altruistic as they may be, hurt those closest to him. In Little Fockers, it was Owen Wilson unintentionally screwing over Ben Stiller. In Fred Claus, it’s young Santa Claus screwing over his big brother Fred.

I’m amazed Mrs. Claus is cool with Elizabeth Banks’s low-cut uniform.

If you’re looking for a good Christmas comedy that you can watch around the kids, you’d do well with Fred Claus.

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At The Theater #41: Little Fockers

IT’S FINALLY HERE! THE EPIC CONCLUSION TO THE FOCKERS SAGA! EEEEE! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Okay, maybe I’m overreacting a little bit. No one is going to line up for a midnight screening of the latest sequel to Meet the Parents.

I loved Meet the Parents, but I have yet to make it all the way through Meet the Fockers. I’ve tried. More than twice. The closest I’ve come so far was making it to just around the halfway mark when it was on TBS recently. Amazingly, never finishing Meet the Fockers had no impact on my ability to understand Little Fockers.

Meet the Fockers had a similar drop in quality from Meet the Parents as Father of the Bride 2 had from Father of the Bride. Thankfully there wasn’t a equal drop in quality with Little Fockers. Little Fockers was about as good as Meet the Fockers. This bodes well for Father of the Bride fans who never gave up faith for a third movie.

The major upsides of Little Fockers are definitely Robert DeNiro and Owen Wilson reprising their roles from Meet the Parents. If they decide to make another Fockers movie and Robert DeNiro doesn’t want to do it, they need to call it a day. Without DeNiro’s ex-CIA Type A father-in-law Jack Byrnes, Little Fockers would fall completely flat on its face.

I really like Owen Wilson in roles like this one, where he plays the super-nice guy who still manages to dick people over. He always means well, and his heart is in the right place, but he never quite seems to get the negative impact he has on people around him. I’m pretty sure he plays the same character in the soon to open How Do You Know. Wait, I’m pretty sure he plays that character all the time. I’m cool with that.

According to a recent unscientific poll, I am the only one of my friends who wants to see How Do You Know.

Is anyone else always surprised by how buff Ben Stiller is? My friend and I were talking about this after Little Fockers. Maybe it’s because he’s usually not in tight fitting clothes, but then WHAM, there’s a scene where he’s wearing a snug t-shirt and you’re sitting in the theater thinking, “Damn! Gaylord Focker is ripped!”

I’m not sure who decided December 2010 would be the month of boner pill movies, but here we are. First there was the Anne Hathaway’s breasts/Viagra vehicle Love and Other Drugs and now there’s Little Fockers, where Greg Focker earns extra money by promoting an off-brand Viagra. Both movies deal with the side effect of the pill working too well, and to their credit, both have different, but still very funny takes on what happens next.

Better title than Pequeño Fockers?

I can’t honestly recommend spending money on seeing Little Fockers. Wait until TBS does a marathon and catch it right after you finally finish watching Meet the Fockers.