To think that the purveyors of this trash want to wipe out the French cinema

Rating: 1/10 (27 April 2005)

Hollywood (and you can't get more Hollywood than Universal and Dreamworks) is still fighting the subsidy battle in Europe. They have already forced French films on to specialty shelves in video rental outlets in France, where Hollywood blockbusters line the shelves. In cinema terms, the French (who invented the moving picture) are guests in their own country. Meet the Fockers, with its offensive and ill-bred title, stands for everything nasty and greedy about the superpower movie industry today. It is a rehash of used goods. It dispenses with a story line. It cynically exploits children and animals for unfunny gags. It is filled with smut. It presents a debased, unrecognisable, version of Jewish religious ritual (the shotgun wedding at the end). It recycles actors who are past their use-by dates, presumably in order to pay lower fees. The credits suggest that Robert De Niro put money into this picture. What a laugh. The family values cynically promoted in this picture seem to have little interest for him in his private life. Perhaps it was a make-work project for himself. He has driven his acting career to such a low point that his phone must have stopped ringing long ago. Compare Al Pacino's fine work in a picture like The Merchant of Venice. Compare the noble treatment of Judaism in that fine picture with the trivialisation of it in this movie. Dustin Hoffman must be desperate. His character is made of pieces of cardboard that don't even match. One minute he is cuddling DeNiro, kissing his neck and preaching love, the next he is brutalising him in a tediously choreographed US football game in the garden. He's about as funny as a patient in a mental home. Barbra Streisand...well, there's a lady who once could sing. Her voice was huge and her record sales matched. But she can't do comedy. Ben Stiller has aged. He no longer looks the ingenu in close-up. His character fails to work when played by a middle-aged man. Apparently the spaniels are paying to see this junk. Perhaps they think it's funny, or just sit there remembering the previous film and thinking this must be funny too. Perhaps they wait patiently, then exit agreeing that it was very funny so they feel they did not waste their money. Who can explain these mutts? The US audience increasingly seems to be getting the films it deserves. Sorry I can't be more positive---there are films I like, I swear. But increasingly, they are never from the US dream machine.