Little Fockers

The successor to Meet the Parents.

Six years after Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro emerged as one of Hollywood's most unlikely comedy duos, the Meet the Parents franchise returns with male nurse Greg Focker and his wife Pam the proud parents of twins Henry and Samantha.

Greg's hard-earned family approval is destined to plunge to new lows as ever-suspicious control freak Jack Byrnes (De Niro) develops a new obsession: he is now on a mission to appoint his successor in charge of the whole family.

This will only mean more pressure on Greg, as his father-in-law can't help but stick his nose into his business - queue the familiar succession of misunderstandings and cringeworthy moments leading up to Jack trying to get his daughter back with her ex Kevin (Owen Wilson).

And while Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand's contributions are purely nominal, Wilson and new addition Jessica Alba are pivotal in adding extra spice to the whole story.

Yet it's not quite clear why the follow-up to the mega successful Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers was slated by critics. Perhaps the default cynicism that tends to surround sequels may have something to do with it.

No doubt none of Little Fockers is groundbreaking comedy and, yes, a lot of it relies on poop scenes and all-too-familiar slapstick, but so what?

Exactly like its predecessors, Little Fockers does what it says on the tin without any high-brow ambition or post-ironic pretension.

The film contains a selection of laugh-out-loud and crude moments: from the "Sustengo" bits (which carry tons of cringe factor -especially the scene of Ben Stiller administering De Niro an injection in his private bits) and the two protagonists' trip to the kids' new school, to the random references to Andy Garcia or the final youtube video complete with remix.

Little Fockers may not mark a watershed moment in the history of comedy but it'll make for ninety minutes of good entertainment.