श्रेक द थर्ड

Shrek The Third is another entertaining romp through the erstwhile Hollywood of Far Far Away with a few laughs for adults and a few more for kids. Like all of the films in this series, it has a big and good heart, and occasionally pays homage to or pokes fun at modern films. Unlike the previous films, however, Shrek III is not a source of non-stop hilarity, and contains a little more thematic content.

Shrek finds himself inheriting his father-in-law's crown and learns that Fiona is pregnant. Predictably, both of these eventualities play pretty dissonantly on the big green guy's insecurities, and he goes a-questing to locate the next-in-line of succession - a young, dejected, high school kid. Meanwhile, charming has developed even more of an attitude problem, and is putting together a whole battalion of people with grudges.

One of the themes of the first two Shrek films was 'don't judge a book by its cover'. Shrek III takes the theme a little farther and puts a different spin on it. The lesson learned here is "don't judge yourself superficially." And it works. My rating of six is based solely on the entertainment value of the film. This film is not quite as well-paced and well-directed as the previous two films, and Charming is simply not the heavy-weight heavy that his mom was. Nevertheless, it's still worth a look, and still carries positive messages entertainingly.

The movie did not really hold the attention of my two younger kids. Even for me, the funny experience of watching both Shrek 1 and 2 was not really very evident with this installment. I remember in Shrek 2, I was laughing out loud with each passing pop culture reference and innuendo being bantered around. However, that was not so here.

I was not too amused with the Disney princesses characters. Shrek's "baby nightmare scene" was well-executed. Justin Timberlake did well in voicing his "grovelling at Merlin's feet" scene. Overall, this movie was not that bad, but it needed to be much better to be worthy to stand on the same level as the first two Shrek films.

When his new father-in-law, King Harold falls ill, Shrek is looked at as the heir to the land of Far Far Away. Not one to give up his beloved swamp, Shrek recruits his friends Donkey and Puss in Boots to install the rebellious Artie as the new king. Princess Fiona, however, rallies a band of royal girlfriends to fend off a coup d'etat by the jilted Prince Charming.

I have to admit, I really wasn't as hyped to see this film than Shrek 2. The trailer was okay, the plot sounds less interesting, and many critics didn't like this film. Yeah, this film is full of energetic characters and some visually dazzling scenes, but it's not as funny, entertaining, or as great as the last two films.

If you've seen the trailer, that's probably all the good jokes that they got in the film. I expected to laugh as much as I did at Shrek 2, since this film is more for the adults than the kids to enjoy. It's a sad fact that more of the jokes comes from secondary characters than the main ones. The action scenes were good, not great, but the story just doesn't interest me.

And the Shrek and Fiona spark isn't as much there as it were in the previous two films. Now here's the good: I liked the secondary characters. They are all funny. This is the most visual Shrek film, having colorful scenes pop out.

This film seems to rely more on the slapstick humor to cover up the weak plot, seemed to not be filled with originality. I didn't mind that. There are some pretty good jokes and some good action scenes. Don't watch this film expecting a great film like the first two, although I wanted this to be a worthy sequel.

So, I just caught the 10 pm show of Shrek 3 and I gotta say, as a fan of the first two I was not impressed. In fact, I was very disappointed. It literally was the same movie the third time, and instead of infusing it with tons of fun and pop culture references like the second Shrek did, it just relied on its plot and genre convention to further it. There was ONE funny moment. The Led Zeppelin reference was good and was funny, but as a whole, the movie was a phoned in experience. Again, what a disappointment. At least most of the stuff shown in the trailer was in the first fifteen minutes or so and you get fresh stuff from there on out. The sad thing is that this fresh stuff feels dull and rehashed even though you've never seen it before.

Terrible effort all the way around.

The story of Shrek the Third (2007) is not quite as good as the first or second films but the comical lines and visual comedy is still right up there with the first two movies.

Some of the new characters are not quite as enduring and memorable in Shrek 3 but they are quite likable and entertaining.

The animation in this 3rd installment of the film series is still awesome.

All I can really say is I enjoyed this 3rd film. And I do recommend it if you enjoyed Shrek and Shrek 2.

8.5/10