0
0
In the second of this summer’s Big Threes, Shrek (Mike Myers) and the gang return for another adventure that’s an awful lot like their other adventures.
As the king of Far Far Away lies on his lily pad, about to croak (He’s a frog—get it?), he bequeaths his kingdom to his son-in-law, Shrek. But Shrek doesn’t want to be king. He wants to go back home to his swamp. The only way he can get out of the job, though, is to search for the next in line—a teenager named Arthur (Justin Timberlake), who doesn’t think he’s up for the job, either. With the help of his two pals, Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas), he’s got to talk Artie into taking over the kingdom—because Shrek’s got more important (and more terrifying) things on his mind. Just before he left on his journey, Fiona (Cameron Diaz) announced that she’s pregnant—and the last thing Shrek wants is to be a father.
Meanwhile, back in Far Far Away, Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) decides not to go down without (another) fight. So he gets all the ousted villains together in an attempt to take over the kingdom once and for all. They storm the castle during Fiona’s baby shower—and Fiona is captured with the rest of the fairy tale princesses. But since the princesses are all used to waiting for their prince to show up and rescue them, none of them are quite sure how to fight back.
Shrek the Third is like a joke you’ve heard a few too many times. Maybe it was funny the first time you heard it (though, with Shrek that’s not necessarily the case). But once you’ve heard the same joke a few more times, it’s just not funny anymore. Sure, there are a few decent laughs in Shrek the Third, but the rest of the movie feels like the same old joke, told over and over and over again. Just the same old pop culture references and grown-up innuendoes followed by the same old fart jokes.
But Shrek the Third isn’t just the same old joke. It’s also the same old story. The whole villains-fighting-back thing was done just months ago, in Happily N’Ever After—though it wasn’t funny then, either. And Prince Charming already tried to get his hands on the kingdom in Shrek 2—only with the help of the Fairy Godmother. The only difference here is Shrek’s inner battle with his fears of fatherhood. I think I can safely assume that next installment will have him facing a mid-life crisis—or perhaps just the potty training of his kids—as he once again tries to save the kingdom from the poorly-planned advances of an slightly-aging-yet-still-imbecilic Prince Charming.
I wasn’t the only one, though, who wasn’t totally amused. I noticed that the crowds of children around me—who ran into the theater with a level of excitement equal to that exhibited on the last day of school—only laughed sporadically. And even then, it was often at jokes that they clearly didn’t get—usually the ones with sexual connotations. And while the kids laughed at the grown-up jokes that they didn’t get, the grown-ups themselves kept pretty quiet.
Obviously, the makers of Shrek decided to go with the old “if it ain’ broke, don’t fix it” theory with Shrek the Third—and they just did the same thing they’ve been doing for the last two movies. The animation’s a little better, but the jokes are still the same. So if you’ve seen the other two (or even one of the other two), you’ve pretty much already seen this one. Don’t feel that you need to go out of your way to see it again.
