Dreamworks #14: Shrek the Third

Shrek the Third - 7.2/10

They’ve gone back to the well. The first one was groundbreaking and the second was brilliant, so can you really blame them? Keeping such a high level of quality over so many films is difficult though, and this time the well has run dry. Only it’s not all bad, so it’s more like the well ran dry when the bucket was half full so they just peed in it to top it off.

It starts out great, and feels very Shrek-ish. The same style of humor as the previous films is present, as are all the characters we love. In act 2 is where things start to sour a little. The new character this time is Arthur, or “Artie”, the teenaged heir to the throne of Far Far Away. They could have done a lot with this character, but they chose to make him the awkward dork with bully issues. Why? Why did they do this? The setting was funny (a medieval high school), the concept was funny (Shrek tracking down the next king so he doesn’t have be king himself), and everything else carried over from the first two was funny (Puss and Donkey especially, as usual). But this kid…ARRGH. It’s all the wimpy kid tropes made fun of in films like Not Another Teen Movie, but played completely straight. Think about that: teen angst played straight – in a Shrek movie! What the hell? Being voiced by a whiny Justin Timberlake doesn’t help, either.

Like I said, just about everything else works. Not quite to the level of Shrek 2, but at least as good as the original if not better. The other new character, Mr. Merlin (played by Eric Idle) is amusing, and Rupert Everett does a smashing job as returning villain Prince Charming. It’s just a shame so much of the plot revolves around such a boring, irritating character. 

They do a lot of neat stuff with the plot, which I’ve come to expect. More fairy tale tropes are played with, and the princesses forming an action squad to take matters into their own hands and rescue themselves was great fun (with great music to boot). However, even worse than the teen angst (if possible) is the climax and resolution. Quite apart from the usual fare of flipping fairy tale morals on their heads, they not only choose to play it straight again, but do so in such a heavy-handed, unsubtle way that it felt like an 80s after school special. Gag.

So basically, I sum it up thusly: where this movie stays true to its franchise roots, it shines. When it forgets and does the opposite of what made the original and its sequel classics in the first place, it quite predictably flops. If I had to weigh the bad against the good, I’d say the good won out enough for it to still be an enjoyable film, but just barely.