Editorial
Front Page - Friday, June 4, 2010
The Critic's Corner
David Laprad
I can only imagine the difficulty of what the writers at DreamWorks Animation faced as they sat down to crank out “Shrek Forever After,” the final installment of the popular series. The original “Shrek” was a classic, full of humor, wit, great characters and a story that poked fun at every Disney cliché. The second film was most of that, only less so, while the third was mind-numbingly dull. Of the three, the first “Shrek” was the only one to tell a story worth revisiting.
With the release of the last “Shrek” movie, DreamWorks is, sadly, one for four.
“Shrek Forever After” isn’t a bad movie, nor does it induce sleep, it’s just pointless. The crisis that propels the story forward is sort of clever, but the lives of its protagonists don’t change between the beginning and the end of the film, rendering the experience meaningless.
Worse, much of the returning cast has nothing special to do, including Donkey. At times, Eddie Murphy sounds like he’s trying to be funny, but he wasn’t given (or didn’t come up with) any lines as hilarious as his parfait and onion layers rant in the original.
In fact, I barely laughed while watching the fourth movie. I kept hoping for a one-liner to double me over like the “I’ve got helmet hair” gag from the first “Shrek,” but I waited in vain. I might have chuckled two or three times, but that was it.
The biggest problem with “Shrek Forever After” is that it’s everything the original parodied. There’s no satire or wit, only a stock, feel good fairy tale that’s no different from anything in the Disney catalog. And that’s disappointing. (I’m not criticizing Disney, merely pointing out that the original “Shrek” set itself apart by playing against the Disney formula.)
As “Shrek Forever After” opens, our hero is trapped inside an unending whirlwind of domesticity. Every day consists of waking up to screaming triplets, feeding them, changing noxious diapers, telling the same story every night during dinner and hearing Fiona repeat the same line over and over again. “Better out than in,” she says as the babies noisily empty the contents of their bowels while sitting in their dad’s lap.
Poor ol’ Shrek can’t even take a five-minute mud bath without Donkey popping in with his interspecies offspring for a play date. (Remember, Donkey married the dragon from the first film.) Adding insult to injury, a villager asks him to sign his pitchfork and a kid at a birthday party demands Shrek “do the roar” that once made him such a fearsome creature.
Just as Shrek is boiling over with discontent, along comes Rumpelstiltskin, a scheming magician with de-signs on ruling Happily Ever After. To do so, he’ll have to go back in time, stop Shrek from saving Fiona and convince the king and queen to sign their kingdom over to him in exchange for removing the curse on their daughter. (Remember, before becoming a full-time ogre, Fiona was a beautiful woman by day.)
After Shrek blows up at a birthday party and tells Fiona he wants things to go back to the way they were before they met (with villagers running from him in fear and him doing what he wanted, when he wanted), Rumpelstiltskin shows up and promises to give him just that for 24 hours. All Shrek has to do is give up one random day from his past.
Rumpelstiltskin chooses the day Shrek came into the world, effectively stopping him from ever being born – and from ever rescuing Fiona. Unaware of what’s happened, Shrek happily runs around terrorizing villagers and soaking in mud, ignorant that Fiona must fall in love with him before the day is over or he’ll disappear forever. The only problem is, he was never born, so no one, including his wife, knows who he is.
It takes a long time and a lot of expositionary dialogue to get to that point. This would’ve been bearable had Rumpelstiltskin been entertaining to watch, but he’s not. Rather, he’s an annoying little nit whose nasal voice and hyperactive mannerisms quickly grow irritating.
The best thing about “Shrek Forever After” was its look. I especially enjoyed the dangling roots inside our hero’s abandoned home in the magically altered universe and the detail in the surrounding forest. But it was depressing to see a series that started out with a bang sputter and run out of gas, even as it tried to dazzle audiences with better visuals.
During its opening weekend, “Shrek Forever After” lured in about half as many viewers as the third movie did when it premiered, sealing the fate of these films. It’s an ignominious end for a character that deserved a better sendoff.
Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.
|
|