Review of Shrek the Third (2007) by Amoviecritic — 19 May 2007

Alright, unlike with Spider-Man 3, this time I actually agree with the critics. What a disappointment Shrek The Third was. The first movie was a brilliant and charming spoof of Disney cartoons and fairy tales and was really fun for anyone, even older audiences.

Shrek 2 left a little bit of that behind but still delivered a great and charming movie for all audiences. Maybe it's the loss of series director Andrew Adamson (who is now working on the Narnia series) but Shrek The Third feels different from the first 2 almost immediately, and not in a good way.

Almost immediately, the humor feels forced, and the movie almost seems to be aimed at a much younger audience than the first 2. This movie is so tame and sugary, in fact, that it often ended up feeling just like the Disney movies the series was originally spoofing.

This becomes even more clear when a "message" is blatently delivered to the audience at the end of the movie. The plot is entirely mediocre, Donkey and Puss seem to have nothing to do, (and the filmmakers, as if realizing this, half-heartedly threw in a pointless character switch, I guess in a failed attempt to keep these characters interesting) and Shrek himself is really just a boring character this time around.

Although this movie is definitely aiming only for the kiddies (whereas the first 2 Shrek movies were definitely for all audiences) some attempts at "adult jokes" and out-of-place licensed rock music was halfheartedly thrown into the movie and feels entirely out of place.

Yes, there are a couple funny moments here, but they were almost all given away in the trailers and commercials. (I hate it when they do that.) Much of the humor felt very forced, and even the audience I saw this in (which contained plenty of little kids) let plenty of jokes fall flat.

(Although they enjoyed all the fart jokes thrown in at the end of the movie.) Of course the animation is very nice, and as I said, a couple jokes hit and are pretty funny, but there's really no reason to see this.

What a disappointment. The makers of these movies have completely forgotten why these movies were made to begin with and what we ended up here was a boring, mostly un-funny, and very forced mess.