I admit it. I enjoyed “Shrek Forever After”. There, I said it. Are you happy? After months of saying that it would suck and it was going to be torture watching it, I walked out of “Shrek Forever After” feeling good and displaying a smile. But, I really hope that this truly is the final film in the Shrek franchise. After nine years of being one of the most successful franchises of all time, I hope DreamWorks will allow the big green ogre to rest with the knowledge that he went out in style. I really wanted to hate this film and I was trying to find things in every frame to hate, but I have to admit that I really liked “Shrek Forever After”.
The film begins with showing Shrek’s new life as a father of three. He’s married to Fiona, lives in his swamp, and has frequent family get-togethers with Donkey, Dragon, and their mutant dronkey babies. However, Shrek starts to miss the life he used to have as a care-free and hunted ogre, and by chance runs into a midget by the name of Rumplestiltskin. Rumpy promises to give Shrek 24 hours to live his former life as a mean ogre, and in exchange must give one of his days to get a day. Shrek is tricked into giving the day he was born, thus throwing him into an alternate reality where he was never born. And everything is fucked up. Since it’s in the trailer, I’m not spoiling any of the changes that are in this reality. In this world Donkey doesn’t know Shrek, Puss in Boots has become the new Garfield, Fiona has become Xena Warrior Ogre, and Rumplestiltskin has become the king of Far Far Away. From there, Shrek must find a way escape this new reality and get back to the life he had.
I’m just going to get the negatives out of the way first. The marketing campaign for this film was awful. In every trailer, they pick out almost all of the bad jokes and throw them in the trailer. And they are just as painful to watch in the film. I’d say that I laughed at the jokes in “Shrek Forever After” 45% of the time, and that’s still very low for an animated comedy. However, it is a major improvement over “Shrek the Third’s” 0.01% laugh rate. There is also a character that you don’t see in the trailer, but he is completely useless. He is not integral to the plot, not funny, and he’s only there to reinforce the reason to have a crappy dance number. Speaking of which, I didn’t see it in 3-D and I never will. But it is very obvious that the scenes where staged to be in 3-D. The animators manage to cram every scene with something that would fly out at the audience if they saw it in 3-D, but in 2-D it’s just annoying. Also, some of the running jokes in the first two are reintroduced in this film, but they’ve really beat them into the ground. In “Shrek 2”, Puss in Boots doing the cute, big-eyes look was hysterical. In “Shrek Forever After”, the old joke is poorly executed and really just there for a cheap laugh. There are also new ogre characters that could’ve been potentially funny and they could’ve gotten some great laughs out of it, but they are just wasted.
Now complaints aside, the film is a major improvement over the god-awful “Shrek the Third”. While “Shrek the Third” was horribly written, annoyingly voiced, offensively stupid pile of crap, “Shrek Forever After” is funny, entertaining, and has its heart in the right place. This film rightfully focuses on Shrek and Fiona’s love rather than Shrek trying to find some heir to the throne of Far Far Away, and that’s where it soars. The scenes where Shrek is falling in love with Fiona all over again are sweet, heartfelt, and they really make you root for and care about Shrek. You want him to succeed in the end. You want him to get the girl, again.
They also go the extra mile by making Shrek’s problems relatable to any father, and that alone is worth a good amount of recognition. This is one of the very few DreamWorks films that express mature situations, but they don’t play it down just so the kids will be able to understand it. The people at DreamWorks are giving kids a lot more credit to their intelligence than they do in most of their films, and understand that kids can accept mature material and will be able to take it in stride.
Another very good thing about this film is that even though there are a few pop culture jokes, they are the right ones. They aren’t offensively lazy, and they are actually integrated well into the plot and are worthy of a chuckle. When the film is funny, it is really funny. There is a line in a film I have been repeating all weekend and it is one of the biggest laughs in a long time. You’ll know what it is if you see the film, but it involves a fat kid with a lollipop. Also instead of being annoying like he was in the third film, Eddie Murphy has returned Donkey to his lovable old ways. There were just random moments of hilarity that spout out of Donkey’s mouth that reminded me that Eddie Murphy is talented. Now if only he would just stop starring in all these fucking family films.
The voice acting is also a major improvement from the previous film. We no longer have any of the annoying characters that were introduced or re-introduced in “Shrek the Third”. Justin Timberlake as that annoying Artie kid is gone. THANK GOD!!!! All of the lame fairytale villains from The Poison Apple are gone. MUCH APPRECIATED!!! Prince Charming has finally been erased from the Shrek universe. He was great in the second one, but he was just stupid in the third one. Mike Myers is still great as Shrek. Cameron Diaz is as awesome as ever as Fiona. Antonio Banderas is great as Puss in Boots once again. And the new villain Rumplestiltskin (voiced by Walt Dohrn) is funny and chews up the scenery. Gingy and Pinocchio are still voiced excellently, and almost steal the movie for the little time they are on. A very good ensemble cast all around.
And let’s not forget the animation. While the 3-Dness of the film can be annoying, the animation is an absolute pleasure to look at. It’s amazing how far this stuff has come. The environments look like they were ripped out a storybook, the character models are amazing, and the various little things that are going in the environment are fun to look for and discover.
Overall, “Shrek Forever After” is a fun film for the whole family and major improvement over the atrocious third film. The film leaves you feeling good and even though the final line is cheesy, it still warms your heart after all these years of following these characters. Rest in peace Shrek, you’ve earned it. B+
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