Reviews

I'm a Shrek fan, perhaps not the most enthusiastic in the world, but a fan nonetheless. I value the good laughs I got mainly from Shrek II, but I value them more because I could enjoy them with my entire family. That's rare for us. The Shrek series has plenty of magic to call upon: the entire panoply of mythic characters from Grimm through Disney, rendered in state-of-the-art realistic animation. It also has the resources of a star cast and the momentum of two previous successes. How then can it all add up to such a huge disappointment? It amazes me when Hollywood can take a success like 1 and 2, and make enough errors that coalesce into a cinematic mess.

The writers took an excellent ensemble cast, good timing, a wicked sense of humor and added—what? Let's go through it. First they added "meaning"—as I leaned over and said to my twelve year old, "it's like the film was high-jacked by a third grade teacher." They added a new, major character (voiced by the genre-challenged Justin Timberlake) that was not only massively unappealing and unfunny, but an opportunity for my imaginary third grade teacher to "teach" us about bullying the little guy, etc. I could understand it if a studio was compelled (say by the equivalent of the federal miles per gallon standards forced onto domestic auto manufacturers) to have a certain amount of Department of Education approved "teaching" in a film, but that wouldn't explain their ambition to "teach us" about fears of parenthood. Who exactly do they like their audience is?

The core issue is Shrek's reluctant to (a) have enough ambition to be king which is mysteriously offered to him over the true heiress, his wife, and (b) additional reluctance to shoulder the ambitions and responsibility of fatherhood. Funny? No. Third grade teacher material? Yes. Well, sort of, but maybe someone speaking to young adults (who will hate this preachy film). But comedy? No, not even close. So how does a studio take millions of dollars, a huge cast including comic talents like Mike Meyers, John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Eddie Murphy. OK, Eddie Murphy isn't that funny when he's in a fat suit, but he does good sidekick.

My first inkling that something was wrong came early when the father-King frog died for a protracted scene. Remind me, what's funny about a guy dying for a long, long, time again? Then there's a whole scene at a medieval high school full of flat, dated "valleyspeak" that the kids have moved on from years ago. How old are these writers? Are they all obsessed with their first pregnancy?

On top of all this they desecrate the already seriously overused Arthurian legend. This unfunny boy, Artie, is supposedly the young King Arthur. Adding insult, they make Merlin into a ineffectual retired hippie complete with Birkenstocks and a drumming circle. What are they trying to say? Isn't it enough to desecrate Disney's own products like making Captain Hook secret ambition to be a flower gardener? All here villains harbor lost ambitions and it takes a very minor confrontation to turn them back into productive citizens.

It all goes on painfully long, unredeemed even by the credits, which were quite funny in Shrek II. It's hard to understand let alone explain a fiasco like this. Was the person in charge humor-impaired? Or perhaps they were not able to lead a huge machine like this, and ended up taking one or two bits from everyone, the whole never adding up. Was there an unfunny heavy boot from the studio? Did the studio want to make less money for some obscure stock-buy back scheme comprehensible only to the inner circle? We will never know. Maybe even the director, writers and cast can't explain it. It's like the fall of Rome. It happened; there are theories, but they are in the end just theories.

I'm a fan of horror and have enjoyed the other Rob Zombie I've seen. I was surprised to find such a huge narrative flaw in this, given it would have been relatively easy to restructure. SPOILER: the early part works well and I like the character of the half-mad Sheriff... However, vengeance on the wicked by a police officer is not narratively satisfying. We cannot empathize with the wicked, however abused they may be. Nor can we empathize with the sheriff who has let his grief and madness make him as crazy as the people he has in his clutches. So we are left, oddly, in the middle of all the blood and madness, unconnected to the film. The essential "gimmick" of horror (that we become the chased...) is missing throughout most of the film. Perhaps the filmmaker thought this was an interesting variation on the "usual" connection to the victim that the viewer makes... but it obviously doesn't work (at least for me). He could have made the same film in a slightly different order and kept us engaged. Sad, for all the effort at being edgy to be defeated by the old fashioned narrative arc.