Sunday, May 21, 2023

Shrek the Third (2007 Movie)

IMDB states:
“Reluctantly designated as the heir to the land of Far, Far Away, Shrek hatches a plan to install the rebellious Artie as the new king while Princess Fiona tries to fend off a coup d’état by the jilted Prince Charming.”

What they forget to mention is that Artie is Arthur Pendragon, Fiona is pregnant and Shrek is having a real problem coming to grips with his approaching fatherhood. The coup by Prince Charming is rolled back as easily as it happened and the movie ends with Fiona and Shrek having triplets.

Prince Charming as the villain is more of a joke, which is ok for a kids movie, but once again, there are lines here and there and references that I wouldn’t want a kid of mine hearing or seeing. The crassness levels are toned down. There is one scene though where Shrek and Fiona are all dressed up like French Royalty and Shrek has an itch on his bum. So he gets a flute player to scratch his bum and of course that is when the curtain rises and the entire assembly sees it. I laughed so hard.

The whole King Arthur storyline pushed the interactions between Donkey, Shrek and Puss n Boots to the side and the writers really didn’t come out shining. His story arc was predictably shallow and “emotional” and then wham, done. On the plus side, there is a scene where Shrek is trying to “relate” to Artie and talks like some sort of 60’s hippy teen on weed. Once again, that was gold! But one scene isn’t enough to carry a whole movie for character interaction.

This is step down from Shrek 2 and while I still enjoyed it, I think it definitely entered into stupid territory instead of clever territory. I could feel the steam running out of the franchise.

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