Shrek Forever After (2010)

Shrek Forever After (2010)

5/10

Starring

Mike Myers

Eddie Murphy

Cameron Diaz

Antonio Banderas

Julie Andrews

Directed by Mike Mitchell

This fourth movie takes a better swing at the Shrek franchise than Shrek the Third. While not being as much fun as the first movie or the second, this one had its moments.

I did not laugh like it did seeing the first two films, but I was a little intrigued when I saw the new dimension the animation story took. It is not like the path the plot took is something original, we have seen this kind of plot before: man gets tired of how his life is now and wishes for it to be how it was. When he gets his wish he realises that he did not know what he had until it was gone.

They were a little wiser here than in Shrek the Third. In the second Shrek were we had to go up against a whole lot of character introduction, each of the new characters did not have long screen time, the focus was mainly on Shrek and Fiona. Here too the writers put the focus back on them, but they did not put up a good enough foe.

The dynamic of a mother wanting the best for her son was a nice reason to be against anyone who went against it. That is what Shrek 2’s foe the Fairy Godmother was about. If you look at what happened in the movie from her point of view.

Here the foe Rumpelstiltskin just wanted the regular thing any bad guy wanted, to rule.

The movie plot starts with us seeing Fiona’s father and mother in a scene of what happened elsewhere moments before Shrek saved Fiona in Shrek 1. They were about to sign their kingdom away to Rumpelstiltskin so that he can use his magic to save their daughter when they were interrupted by a guard telling them that Fiona has been saved.

We fast forward to present day and Shrek is overwhelmed by his new life of being a father and how everyone sees him. We see him get frustrated at his children’s first birthday and while roaming about he sees a man (Rumpelstiltskin) trapped under a carriage. Rumpelstiltskin sees that Shrek is down, so he uses this against. He tricks him into signing away one of the days in his past for a single day where everything goes back to normal.

Shrek at first was happy when he discovered that Rumpelstiltskin has tricked him. Rumpelstiltskin took from Shrek a very significant day in his life.

Shrek has a timer on his head and has until the end of the day to break the contract, the problem is the day Rumpelstiltskin took meant that everything Shrek has done never happened. So he is not friends with Donkey or Puss (both do not know him). He never rescued Fiona and he has lost his children. Devastated he kidnaps Donkey and was able to convince him that there were friends in another life and the two have to find away to save Shrek’s life and stop Rumpelstiltskin who is now king of Far Far Away.

The only thing here that is an improvement to the first two films is the animation.