Director: Mike Mitchell
Screenwriters: Josh Klausner, Darren Lemke
Production designer: Peter Zaslav
Music: Harry Gregson-Williams
Cast: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Walt Dohrn
 (93 min. All Ages)

The Bottom Line

If you are a ten-year-old, with a taste for fantasy and 3D animation, you will have a good time watching “Shrek Forever After”. It is vividly conceived, wittily executed and the 3D is used to help the story, not just to create big “Wow!” moments. This fourth film is the series has a darker, more sarcastic feel to it. Fiona has turned rogue, a kind of fantasy biker chick and become a feminist warrior. Puss-in-Boots has become obese and unctuous; Donkey is shrill and as dumb as ever; and Shrek is having a mid-life crisis. It’s like an episode of “Desperate Housewives” with talking animals and the little kids who see it for the time will hoot and holler, but loyal franchise fans may well be asking “What happened here?”

Main Review

It’s been a decade since audiences first met Shrek and fell under the spell of this lonely green ogre and his oddball friends in a world that was robust, magical and quirky. It added a saucy contemporary zip in its style that Disney’s animated romances had never been able to create. But time changes things. The ten year-old film-fan who fell in love with “Shrek” in 2001 is now a 20-year old, and has probably beyond the ogre phase and is waiting for “Predators” to be released. There’s also the question of whether, after three excellent movies, this franchise actually has anything new to say or show to the audience. Familiarity often makes you wonder if you haven’t already seen everything that these characters have to offer.

“Sequelitis” has become a curse in Hollywood, because it has swapped the punchy comedy-line for the commercial bottom-line. Any hit movie is milked to the last drop of profit and in my opinion, that’s what has happened in “Shrek Forever After”.  It is not a total wash-out but it delivers no big thrills either. It’s a bit like going to visit an old friend, but once you get there, you find that he’s not really at his best and you say goodbye thinking “I won’t do that again”. All the familiar voice artists have been retained, so you’ll hear Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews and John Cleese voicing the characters but there’s an entirely new writing team - and it shows.

 “Shrek Forever After” has a new director, Mike Mitchell, who previously directed films like “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” and the odious “Surviving Christmas”. That gives us a reason to pause. Director Mitchell excels in sarcastic comedy and mean-spirited farce that shows people up at their worst. He retains that style for “Shrek Forever After” and the injection of sour comedy, changes the exuberantly funny and energetic vibe of the first three movies. It actually gives this final film a sardonic twist that stops just short of being mean and nasty.

Rumpelstiltskin

The major change is in the script. It builds a new, contradictory and subversive fantasy into the old familiar story. It offers a vision of how Shrek’s life might have played out, had things been different. That is brought about by a new character, a spiteful sprite called Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn).  Early in the film, the audience is treated to a flashback in which we see that Rumpelstiltskin has been a bad guy for a long time. Ages ago he tried to blackmail the king and queen, but he was thwarted and now he wants payback.
He focuses on Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) who has hit a mid-life crisis. He is fixated by the fact that he is an ogre but nobody is scared of him. He feels directionless and he mopes about in a self-pitying, “Is that all there is to life?” mood. Even Puss-in-Boots (voice by Antonio Banderas) is no longer a slinky, sexy feline. He has become a chubby “fat-cat”.

Rumpelstiltskin offers Shrek a contract that will indeed allow him to go back in time, ostensibly to make changes that will make Shrek’s future better. In his haste to feel better, Shrek does not read the contract carefully and Rumpelstiltskin has spitefully fiddled the small print. When Shrek signs the document he is flung back into a world vastly different from the one he remembered. His beloved Fiona (Cameron Diaz) has become an aggressive warrior queen.   Donkey (Eddie Murphy) is also around, but he thinks Shrek has gone a little funny in the head. Classic movie-buffs with a sense of Hollywood history will recognise this plot as a re-vamp of the 1947 classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” starring James Stewart.

It’s an echo that will amuse older movie buffs, but one has to wonder how many of the youngsters who sat down to see a new “Shrek”-movie, will make the connection to a 63-year old movie classic and that’s an issue in this film. They assume a lot.  I wonder what someone who has never before seen a “Shrek” movie will make of this old “You can’t go home again” concept, of which American authors are so fond. The message seems to be that when you finally get the chance to start again, you often find yourself and your situation so altered, that you regret your journey, and that adds a sour note to otherwise lively tale.

The moral -  if we can even call it that -  seems to be that you have to settle for what you have you’ve got, which has always struck me as a tad trite, especially in this film. In the previous movies, we saw Shrek marry the woman he loves, he has great kids and his life with them is both safe and easy. There is no reason for Shrek to go looking for a better, more “real” life, other than that the studio executives wanted to squeeze one last sequel out of this vastly rewarding franchise. This story concept does not fit neatly into the rest of the series and while there is enough energy and fun to keep it amusing, it’s by far the least engaging of the films.

Another factor is that Shrek’s producers have found themselves in a head-to-head competition with “Toy Story 3”. The genius of that film’s witty and heartfelt spirit, and its brilliantly shaped and emotional satisfying story, exposes the sarcastic, gimmicky spirit of “Shrek Forever After”.  That said, the pace is smart, many jokes are funny and the animation is as crisp and elegant as it ever was. The addition of 3D gives it a sparkly new look but as the “Philadelphia Inquirer”, critic Stephen Rea said “As a film, it is mediogre” which is the smartest pun I’ve heard in a long time and also an accurate description of the film.   

Other Views

“The New York Times”, Stephen Holden

What fortifies Shrek Forever After are its brilliantly realized principal characters, who nearly a decade after the first “Shrek” film remain as vital and engaging fusions of image, personality and voice as any characters in the history of animation.

“St. Louis Post-Dispatch”, Joe Williams

It’s no classic, but Shrek Forever After is a pleasant reminder that every time a cash register rings, this ogre turns angelic.

“Wall Street Journal”, Joe Morgenstern

Having run its course in the third installment, the franchise jogs and lurches but mostly meanders through a story that tests the limits of true love (Shrek’s, and ours).

 “Variety”, John Anderson

The reputed swan song for the series and its first entry in 3D, pic contains a respectable number of laughs, but also borrows its storyline from the oft-recycled "It’s a Wonderful Life," and if that’s all its creators can do, it’s best to put “Far, Far Away” far, far away