Shrek the Third (2007)

Shrek the Third (2007)

3/10

Starring

Mike Myers

Eddie Murphy

Cameron Diaz

Antonio Banderas

Rupert Everett

Jennifer Saunders

Julie Andrews

Directed by Chris Miller

This is what happens when you drag a story longer than you ought to. Shrek the Third or Shrek 3 lacked everything (but the characters) that made the first two classic fun. This animation was not funny the adventure was not interesting and Charming was way to simpleton a character to be a villain. Everything about the plot is wrong and every path they took to get to the end was a dead end of jokes. Unlike the first two (Shrek and Shrek 2) where I laughed along to the fun, here I could not even smile but frown in disgust.

They wanted to add the dynamic of fatherhood to the story and gave Shrek the experience for caring for a younger and inexperienced in life. So to achieve this, we had to deal with Donkey being full of words, but no jokes or out of sync comments. Puss all voice and you hardly care what he has to say and princesses all geared up to lay down and sleep waiting for their prince to come rescue them.

If like me you are going through the Shrek movies, you are probably at the point where I was like, no wonder I could not remember anything about this animation. Ladies and gentlemen it was that bad.

So the Fiona’s parents are presently incapable of running the kingdom because the king of Far Far Away is sick and his wife is at his side. Shrek and Fiona have been filling in for them and at this point you will feel, this is a new dynamic worth exploring. Shrek and Fiona dealing with everyday life away from the swamp. I guess the writers did not think that would work, what they now did, also did not work.

When the king was about to pass, he lays the kingdom in the hands of Shrek and Fiona, as expected Shrek did not want it. What I did not expect was the way out of not being a king is a man named Arthur Pendragon. Shrek was to find him so Arthur can rule in his stead. Again, here is another easy string for the writers to pull, we are all familiar with King Arthur, Merlin and what not. Instead they decided to change it all, this Arthur was a loser and Merlin was mad.

So Shrek set out on a journey to find Arthur with his two best friends. The whole journey there and back, was boring and lame.

Back in Far Far Away, Charming has rallied up an army and he is storming the land and taking over as ruler by force. He plans to make a public show of him defeating Shrek so finding Fiona and the other escaped princesses was key so he can have leverage on Shrek when he returns.

All the voice cast returned to reprise their roles with a few new additions. Even though this movie was a commercial success, it was not a critical one from both critics and audience viewers.

I for one felt the main cause of the nonsense before us are two reasons, the main story arc was crap so everything surrounding getting Arthur to Far Far Away was a sleep fest.

Second the movie gave too much screen time to its supporting cast, distracting us from the fun characters we love to see and starving us the viewers of entertainment.