Can the addition of Ariana Grande turn the Focker franchise around in Focker-in-Law?

Meet the Parents came out in 2000 so the Focker joke is now over 25 years old but the joke of the name still works on me, because I am immature, and probably because I work in television and it is never not fun to say, Meet the Fockers or Focker-in-Law, which is the latest installment in the Focker franchise that’s gotten progressively worse over the years. Can the addition of Ariana Grande turn it around?

Focker-in-Law comes out on November 25, specifically timed for American Thanksgiving, and will challenge The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (releasing a week earlier), at the holiday box office. Sunrise on the Reaping is going to be huge but the first projections for Focker-in-Law came out the other day and right now it’s looking like it’ll be open between $40-50 million; this could change, obviously, but collectively, in addition to the animated movie Hexed, they’re hoping for a strong Thanksgiving long weekend in the United States. And for Focker-in-Law, it might help that reaction after advance screenings just happened have been pretty positive.

Though it’s worth noting that in this timeline, the studios have been enforcing full review embargos and prioritising influencers’ advance screening reaction, so we often have to take early enthusiasm with a grain of salt – but I have seen that some critics who are typically more objective share that they too were pleasantly surprised by the movie so I’m now even more interested in what exactly we’re getting here, especially since the trailer was… underwhelming. Is this a case of going in with low expectations and anything that isn’t total dogsh-t amounts to a win? Or is Focker-in-Law actually a decent comedy?

The emerging consensus, at least from the early reaction (which, again, can be studio-friendly), is that Ariana Grande more than holds her own alongside Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller. Over the last couple of years, the Ariana narrative has been heavily Wicked and her romantic entanglements and her appearance – her comedic talents haven’t been at the forefront of the conversation. But she is funny. She is funny on SNL. She can be wickedly funny on social media. (I will always love her for the “like your hip hop yoga class can f-cking wait i promise” tweet from March 2020.) And we’ll get to see that side of her in this movie, and on the press tour with De Niro and Stiller which is just about as random as it gets in terms of promotional threesomes.

The press tour is now underway. Last night, all three were featured in multiple segments on a special episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

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They also played True Confessions and of course there was the standard interview, three generations of performers who hilariously kinda resemble what three generations of family at Thanksgiving might look like where the grandfather (De Niro) doesn’t say much and the middle-aged person and the young one have to overtalk to compensate. I can’t even imagine what this will look like on a red carpet but I’m actually looking forward to it.

As for Ari’s look, now that she’s in the Focker promotional cycle – her hair is bob length, and she’s pulled it back off her face, per usual but… like… it’s not in a ponytail or a bun. This was debuted on social media a couple of weeks ago but The Tonight Show is the most high-key showcase of the new hairstyle and it looks like this is the one we might be seeing a lot more of on the press tour: shoulder length, severe part, and flipped up on the sides…with extremely 90s makeup. It’s the brown lipstick, not matte but high gloss with a mauve eye. I do not co-sign this trend.