Three of the Republican gentlemen currently running for the office of President of these United States have weighed in on the question of evolution with a complete dismissal of same. A viewing of SHREK THE THIRD, however, might convince them of the fact of DEvolution, at least of the cinematic variety. Rarely has such incontrovertible proof been set forth with such unswerving determination.
What began two films ago as a deliciously snarky reinventing of fairy tales, done with appropriate, and long overdue, swipes at the purveyors of schmaltz has become the very thing it once made sport of. Shrek (Mike Myers) the misunderstood ogre and his lady love, the Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) have settled into a dull married life. Dull for the audience. They seem to be enjoying a high degree of connubial bliss, even while filling in, uncomfortably, for Fiona’s ailing frog-king father (John Cleese) and dealing, fitfully, with wardrobe malfunction of biblical proportions and, once again with a disgruntled Prince Charming (Rupert Everett). If it weren’t for him, with his bouncy hair and his inflated sense of entitlement, there would be very little to make this flick bearable, forget watchable.
Fallen to the indignity of dinner theater and then some, Charming rallies of fairy tale villains ousted in previous installments into a rag tag army questing for their own version of a happy ending. It’s a faint echo of the twisted humor of the first SHREK. And it arrives and departs all too quickly. The only other moment, about a minute actually, worth seeing is when the Gingerbread Man’s life passes all too quickly before his royal icing eyes.
The rest is a tired re-tread of the low-end of the animation spectrum, short on imagination, long on filler. To add insult to injury, it’s dragged Arthur (Justin Timberlake recalling what he sounded like before his voice broke), sans Camelot, into the mire. He’s the geeky loser Shrek wants to succeed the frog-king as ruler of Far Far Away instead of Shrek himself, who longs for the uncomplicated swamps and vermin of home. The trip to fetch Artie, as he prefers to be called, forces the audience to watch a singularly unclever revamp of high school as a medieval experience, complete with a Valley Girl Guinevere, a jousting-jock Lancelot, and a New Age doofus Merlin recovering from the nervous breakdown brought on by teaching at Artie’s high school. FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH it is not. Let’s just say that cheerleaders in pointy headdresses, the closest thing to an original idea here, just don’t look as good as they sound. It’s all in the execution folks.
Meanwhile the Princess Fiona, along with her mother (Julie Andrews), Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White are left to deal with Prince Charming’s army menacing Far Far Away with witches on broomsticks and cranky trees. They respond by turning in Charlie’s Angel’s without the charm or the pizzazz. Cheesy dialogue is mouthed, cheesier situations are muddled through, and pop songs from the 70s are used in ways that are nothing short of mystifying. The most successful interlude, Wings’ “Live and Let Die,” is at best iffy as the accompaniment to the frog-king’s funeral.
Not even Donkey, infused with serious panache by Eddie Murphy, so fabulously fast-talking yet obtuse in the first and second films, can muster anything, even while sparring with the previously entertaining Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas). No one doing voice work here imbues anything resembling enthusiasm in their characterization. They seem as bored with this one-outing-too-many as the audience quickly becomes. SHREK THE THIRD, if there is any justice, will be SHREK THE LAST.
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