Reviews

If we can count on Hollywood studios for one thing it is their unfailing ability to deliver mediocrity when they think they have found the formula for a successful franchise. Formulaic is what they delivered in Shrek 3.

The first two Shreks were irreverent and original. Almost uniquely in Hollywood they managed to entertain both adults and children without neither patronizing the former nor confusing the latter. In Shrek 3, except for a couple of scenes, there was barely a snigger from the audience of any age throughout the movie. With this one don't waste your money at the box office nor the movie rental store.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the increasingly unwatchable number of movies Hollywood has been foisting on the public with their high-dollar marketing campaigns these past four years? I have walked out of three movies within the last three weeks; Spiderman III (twice - don't ask me to explain) and Pirates of the Caribbean; At World's End. They're boring. It is as though someone spoon-fed me a soporific at the beginning of the show; all I do is yawn until I get up and leave.

Where is the hunger?

Given our modern sensibilities with respect to the role of women in society and, lest we be labeled Calibans, it is no great effort to overlook the anachronism and give the nod to the female copyist at the start of this movie. Not five minutes later, though, we are asked to completely strain the boundaries of credulity and accept that the creativity of the second greatest composer ever to have lived (Mahler being the first) owed its triumph to a twenty-three-year-old inexperienced female "secretary".

It is at this point one realizes that the creation of the Ninth Symphony is a patina, a mere plot device, for the true substance of the movie which is Beethoven's suppressed twentieth century feminist ideology. Alas, if only the maestro himself had realized how truly ahead of his time he was! Is it really only twenty years ago we discovered Beethoven was black?

...and yet, if you love Beethoven, it is all about the music. Whatever the historical flaws in this movie, the anticipation engendered when the Ninth begins and the excitement bursting within as the choristers intone "Freude, schöener Götterfunken" of Schiller's Ode to Joy; any misgivings about the picture are completely over-shadowed by the music itself. Which says more about Beethoven's lasting genius than modern movie-making "talent" ever could.