Ben Stiller and Robert Deniro’s embarrassing paycheck movie, Little Fockers opens this weekend. I took one look at the trailer and saw that filmmakers thought the fact that “Focker” kind of sounds like “F*cker” was a strong enough joke that they re-used it five times in two minutes and figured it’d be okay for me to sit this one out.  Many of my film critic colleagues, however, aren’t content with simply assuming that hitting one’s penis with a framing hammer will be painful, and had to find out the boner way. I mean hard.  But thanks to those heroes, we can now play the Plot Recreated with Reviews game.

You know how this works: we recreate the plot using only expository quotes — NO ANALYSIS! — from the poor sad bastards who had to sit through it.

ACT I

Nothing much has changed in the household of Gaylord Focker except that everyone is a few years older. [StarTribune]

Jack, who now suffers from serious heart palpitations, is obsessed with finding a successor to his “throne.”  [WashingtonPost]

“Are you ready to be the GodFocker?” he demands. [StarTribune]

Jack decides Greg is having an affair with pharmaceutical rep Andi Garcia… [FilmSchoolRejects]

…[with whom] Greg is working closely peddle Sustengo, an erectile dysfunction pill… [WashingtonPost]

… and who we’re supposed to believe becomes instantly smitten with Stiller after helping him give an anal probe to an elderly patient. [JoBlo]

She shows up at male nurse Focker’s hospital, inexplicably signs him up to give speeches on her erectile-dysfunction drug, then strips down to her undies and jumps him. [NYPost]

Bernie Focker (Dustin Hoffman), struck with a bout of “manopause,” has fled to Spain to study flamenco dancing, while Dina Byrnes (Blythe Danner) is experimenting with kinky role play in hopes of spicing up her and Jack’s sex life. Greg has to impress the headmaster of a snooty private school (Laura Dern) where he wants his children to go. [WashingtonPost]

Owen Wilson hangs around again as the golden best friend to flirt with Greg’s wife again (accidentally, he got a giant back tattoo of her). [NYPost]

Remember that Black List?  The list of the best unproduced screenplays I mentioned the other day? Ben Stiller has signed on to direct one of them, Mark Friedman’s Help Me Spread Goodness…

…about a Chicago banker who gets swindled in a Nigerian Internet scam.  While the project is meant to be entertaining [thank goodness, I couldn't take another one of Hollywood's deliberately boring think pieces. -Ed], it sheds light on current issues in Nigeria and other African countries, fitting the Participant Media mandate to make films that compel social change.
Timing of when Stiller helms the film depends on the progress of “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” the Aaron Sorkin-scripted drama that Stiller took over after Steven Spielberg exited as director. [Variety]

Well sure, the old internet-scam-as-lead-in-to-African-politics plot device.  It’s just like those old Sally Struthers commercials, about how you can sponsor an African child for just two boner pills a day.  Oh Ndugu, how happy he looks!  …In related news, I think I saw a production of this your sister was in.  She played Goodness.