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52%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #569
...out of 20,698 movies
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Reluctantly designated as the heir to the land of Far, Far Away, Shrek hatches a plan to install the rebellious Artie as the new king while Princess Fiona tries to fend off a coup d'état by the jilted Prince Charming.
--IMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: May 19, 2007
Once again, all is not well with everybody's favorite ogre, Shrek. When his King froggy father-in-law croaks (ahem), Shrek finds himself as the next heir in line to the throne. However, after getting a small taste of the royal treatment, he wants nothing more than to return to his quiet life in the swamp with his wife, Fiona. With this goal in mind, Shrek sets off with his sidekicks, Donkey and Puss in Boots, to hunt down the next in line to the crown, the King's nephew, Arthur. Before he leaves, Fiona breaks the news that she's pregnant. Shrek, a creature who loves his quiet life, is none too happy to hear that and spends the voyage trying to come to terms with this. Meanwhile, Prince Charming is still pissed off about being thwarted in the last movie, having been reduced to a career getting heckled on the stage of a diner, performing crappy plays. With vengeance on his mind, he gathers an army of villains and plans a coup d'état of the kingdom in Shrek's absence.
If you've seen the first two, you know what you're looking at here. The charm of this series lies in the way they've taken the same characters you grew up with in Disney movies, and have made them new and improved by bringing an uncharacteristic off-color humor. However, while the first two were brilliant in my opinion, the shtick is starting to get a bit stale. After two movies, most of the jokes have been told, and there's nothing left except for a few laughs scattered throughout the movie. Also, the head of the series, Andrew Adamson, was MIA on this project since he's now preoccupied with movies about enchanted furniture. The result of the new directors is a general toning down of the characters. The most obvious example of this is Donkey, who in my opinion has always provided the most laughs in the other movies. He had always been loud and extremely obnoxious, never quite realizing just how much he was getting on Shrek's nerves. Here, he's mildly annoying at best, with only a few scenes of him being as outspoken and annoying as in the past. The same goes for Shrek and Puss as well, while both of them still have their trademark defining traits, they all just seem really watered down.
The plot line is also a bit of a weak point. Watching this, you could guess more than half of the twists coming beforehand. The other half didn't need to be guessed since they were lifted straight out of the first sequel. Yes, an ogre is out of place in royalty, we get it. We've already seen this. It was definitely obvious that this movie was made just hoping to cash in off the series, using the same jokes that are starting to get stretched just a bit too thin. On the voice acting side of the table, all the familiar suspects have returned. Mike Myers brings his skills with a Scottish accent back to Shrek, Cameron Diaz again voices Fiona, Antonio Banderas is the charismatic Puss and Eddie Murphy does pretty much the same act he's been doing since Delirious as Donkey. Justin Timberlake joins the fold as well, as Fiona's cousin, Arthur.
Personally, I thought the first two movies were brilliant, but this one leaves quite a bit to be desired. I'm not going to say it needs to be avoided completely, but don't get your hopes too high before going in. I think a 5/10 will do it. Also, it seems that the Shrek machine is still chugging along, as Shrek 4 and a Puss in Boots spin-off is already underway, and the powers that be have every intention of making a fifth.
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#1:
effin
- added November 19, 2007 at 6:56pm
Really disapointing. It seems commercialism has
finnally won out in the shrek 'ahem' franchise.
Jokes aside, saying this movie was stale is like
saying that the war in Iraq isn't really about
WMD's. Pssst, it really wasn't ;-)
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