Review of Shrek Forever After (2010) by Stephen M — 07 May 2012

Once upon a time, there was a funny animated film repeated four times over with only minor variations. Thankfully, this 3D version is the last Shrek movie. It's a good thing the first one had such humor and plot, or they'd never get away with being this reductive.

Papa Shrek (Myers) is again tired of being king of the castle. Especially now that he's changing three little monsters' diapers, he misses his days of being a single ogre. Along comes a mystical elf named Rumpelstiltskin (Dohrn) who promises Shrek one day of bachelorhood. Of course, there's a catch: Rumpelstiltskin wants the kingdom for himself. Under his evil magic spell, everyone-including Princess Fiona (Diaz)-forgets Shrek. Puss (Banderas) is a fat lap cat, but Donkey (Murphy) is still an aimless idiot. There's a major rebellion led by the Princess to clutter things up. Shrek only has this day to reclaim his love and his place on the throne.

It's basically Shrek meets It's a Wonderful Life.

Despite this lack of imagination, the action is still frenetic, and the voices are still entertaining. The jokey cultural references are also still hilarious.

However, no one-kid or adult-wants to see Shrek suffering from male monster menopause. At some point in the creative process, there was probably some mention of how many married men like Shrek long for their bachelor days; there are probably better ways of exploring that than borrowing so heavily from a Christmas classic.