Patriarch Faces Future: Who to Lead Nutty Clan When He Is Gone?

Apparently, because all the good jokes were used up in the first two “Fockers” movies, the wisenheimers behind the latest installment in this unnecessary trilogy decided to bring in some spew, opening a sick toddler’s mouth like a fire hydrant and letting it rip.

The mortification of the body has always played a part in the “Fockers” franchise, which hinges on the uneasy, at times violently contentious relationship between a male nurse, Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and his father-in-law, Jack (Robert De Niro), a former C.I.A. operative. But at their best and funniest, those mortifications were intrinsic to the story’s meaning.

Part of what made the first movies work as well as they did — “Meet the Parents” hit in 2000, and its sequel, “Meet the Fockers,” followed four years later — was the cultural clash that dare not fully speak its name. Initially, the series only broadly winked at the reasons for Jack’s slow-burning tsuris. Was that a bagel in Greg’s pocket, or was he just glad to see his shiksa girlfriend and then wife, Pam (Teri Polo)? But when the second movie brought in Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman to play Greg’s parents, any residual anxiety about the characters’ nominal cultural differences gave way to the spectacle of two legends playfully batting around the Jewish stereotypes that the stars themselves struggled against and transcended.

How do you top Ms. Streisand and Mr. Hoffman playing at being the happy, sexy hippie couple for easy jokes? You don’t. Apparently, you don’t even try, as is evident from the new movie’s lack of wit and surplus of lazy scenes.

Directed by Paul Weitz (Jay Roach did better with the first two), “Little Fockers” reunites all the principal actors, this time to greatly diminished returns in a story that turns on Jack’s decision to anoint Greg the family patriarch. Time is passing, if not quickly enough in this movie, and fears of mortality are nipping at Jack’s heels and clutching at his heart. The ensuing tension — or rather, slackly stitched-together chain of misunderstandings — centers on whether Greg is worthy of this honor.

Are we there yet? No, because first Jessica Alba has to show up and throw off her clothes and then her body at Mr. Stiller, a story line that has everything to do with his star muscle and nothing to do with Greg. This leads to some matrimonial static that draws the series closer to the kind of deadly dull domestic comedy that the “Fockers” franchise previously managed to avoid becoming.

Exhaustion partly explains why, though it also seems clear that Mr. Stiller, who in the 10 years since the first “Fockers” has become a Hollywood powerhouse, isn’t interested in being the butt of anyone’s joke. Mr. De Niro might not mind making mincemeat of his own legacy, as a painful bit with a grinning Harvey Keitel suggests. (Somewhere, Martin Scorsese is lighting a votive candle.) But Mr. Stiller is no longer in a laughing mood.

“Little Fockers” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). The usual bodily liquids and penis jokes.

LITTLE FOCKERS

Opens on Wednesday nationwide.

Directed by Paul Weitz; written by John Hamburg and Larry Stuckey; director of photography, Remi Adefarasin; edited by Greg Hayden, Leslie Jones and Myron Kerstein; music by Stephen Trask; production design by William Arnold; costumes by Molly Maginnis; produced by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro, Jay Roach and Mr. Hamburg; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes.

WITH: Robert De Niro (Jack Byrnes), Ben Stiller (Greg Focker), Owen Wilson (Kevin Rawley), Blythe Danner (Dina Byrnes), Teri Polo (Pam Focker), Jessica Alba (Andi Garcia), Laura Dern (Prudence), Colin Baiocchi (Henry Focker), Daisy Tahan (Samantha Focker), Dustin Hoffman (Bernie Focker) and Barbra Streisand (Roz Focker).