Shrek the Third
Directed by Chris Miller, Raman Hui
Dreamworks Animation 2007
By Caesar Martini
Our favourite Scottish-ogre-voiced-by-a-Canadian returns in the third installment of the hugely popular Shrek series. Shrek the Third (STT) sees our hero coming to power as the ruler of Far, Far, Away, but come now — fancy wigs and knightings and pomp and circumstance? None of these things appeal to a belching, farting ogre. So Shrek sets out to find a replacement ruler for himself so that he can return to his beloved swamp with his beloved Fiona.
Shrek 2 is one of my favourite CGI films of all time, and the previews for STT looked very promising, so I had my hopes up. Unfortunately, though STT is far from a disaster (I’m looking at YOU, Spider Man 3), it misses the mark of greatness and manages only to be a serviceable installment.
The main problem is that it’s too similar to Shrek 2. Once again, we have Shrek not fitting in with the civilized world, and once again, we have him trying to return to his swamp with a chattering donkey and a kitty Zorro in tow. STT doesn’t show us anything particularly new, and re-tells a lot of the same jokes that we’ve already seen. I wish that they had spent some more time with the supporting characters (especially Puss, who is kind of my hero) and thought of something beyond the standard jokes and gags that I expected (or saw from the trailers).
All in all, it’s a good effort, and fans of the franchise should still go see it. It just failed to knock my socks off.
