An Ogre Loses His Teeth

On the days when I work downtown I’m out of the house for a pretty good chunk of time. I leave my home at 7 a.m. and if I’m lucky I get back at 7 p.m.
Thankfully, my work allows me to do two days a week here at the house. Still, I begrudge wasted time of any level when I want to kick back and hang with the goofy girls that run my world. Whether it’s Much Anticipated Movie time, Bath time, Story time or Dance Around The House Singing Old Elton John Tunes Like Hercules time (no... this doesn't mean I dress up like Hercules, it means that an early Elton John tune... ahhh, never mind), it’s important to my mental state of well being that this time goes off with out a hitch.
Last night was movie night and I stopped in at my local Super-center to pick up Shrek The Third. We sat down with our dinner in front of the TV (something we try to limit to once a week) only to discover that in my haste I had accidentally picked up the Full Screen version of the movie... a mistake that is rarely made and never acceptable in my humble abode. It’s letterbox for the Shmoo or nothing at all.
So, the dinner went in to the oven to stay warm and I jumped in the car to exchange the film. Luckily for my obsessive/compulsive nature the store is close to the house.
Twenty minutes later I sat down with Mrs. Shmoo and held my breath in anticipation. I’d still be holding my breath but that would cause death.
Movie night had a hitch.. now my mental state of well being is all out of whack.

The Beginning Of A Tragic Train Shrek:
Shrek’s Quest-
The plot on this third installment of the series is simple enough.
Big Green Ogre Shrek (Mike Myers) and his Big Green Wife Fiona (Cameron Diaz) are filling in on a royal capacity for Fiona’s father, King Harold (John Cleese) while he is on his death bed. Internal discord and family dissension seem to be at an end. When Harold croaks (snicker) Shrek has a choice to make, become King of Far Far Away or find the next in line for the throne. He just wants some peace and his old swamp life, so he grabs Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss In Boots (Antonio Banderas) and off they go to find distant heir Arthur Pendragon (Justin Timberlake) and drag him back to rule. Arthur, a teenage loser’s loser, has no interest. With the aid of Shrek and a befuddled broken down Merlin (Eric Idle) he must come to terms with his own destiny while Shrek tries to come to terms with impending fatherhood.
While Shrek is off, Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) who has been stuck performing bad dinner theatre and mourning his lost mother enlists the aid of the classic Villains to take over Far Far Away. He, Captain Hook, The Headless Horseman, Puppet Master Stromboli, Evil Stepmother, a Cyclops and Stumpypumpkin or Wrinkledforeskin (or what ever the dude’s name is) as well as talking trees and a variety of witches go on a rampage and transform the town in to their idea of a Happily Ever After. They lock up Fiona, her mother Queen Lily (Julie Andrews) Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel (Amy Poehler, Amy Sedaris, Cheri Oteri & Maya Rudolph) and wait for Shrek’s return and impending death.

What Stopped The Bleeding From Shrek's Severed Neck?
-The story, in general, was a really good concept.
-Sending Kind Harold off to his final resting place to the tune of Paul McCartney's Live And Let Die, while a frog chorus performs had a good beat and I was able to dance to it.
-Shrek’s nightmare montage of being a new father will make any new parent laugh. They could have done more with it.
-Ian McShane as Hook and most of his gags. Having him wheeled in to an attack scene, that he was spearheading, with a piano so that he could supply the necessary fight music made me bark a laugh.
-About half of Merlin’s shtick, especially when he was clueless, was funny.
-Worcesterchire Highschool was both hit and miss but The Cheerleaders, the guys in the van burning Frankincense and Myrrh and the examples of 16th century Highschool girl speak (“This is like totally embarrassing, but my friend Tiffany thinkest thou vex her so soothly and she thought perchance thou would want to ask her to the homecoming dance... or something”) were very funny.
-The animosity, obvious jealousy and competition between all the Fairy Tale Princesses worked well.
-Snow White's screeching Banshee attack with the possessed woodland critters, turning her in to some demonic telepath, while Led Zepplin's Immigrant Song blasts the background will make you cheer.
-The animation has become outstanding. Layers and levels in shading and lighting as well as fabric and hair animatronics have come a long way.

The Drech of Shrek
This is not even close to the ground breaking humor and edge that originally set Shrek apart from the competition. Don’t expect the anti-establishment stance that we saw and loved in the first and to a lesser degree second films. Particularly disappointing since you have so many brilliant humorists, comedians, past and present Saturday Night Live members, Monty Python members, flat out funny people who know how to write controversial and topical humor, involved in this film.
Oh, there are still moments, flashes of the old Shrek, Snow White selling one of her dwarves as an indentured servant since “she has six more at home”, a tattoo professing her love for Dopey adorning her right shoulder (you always knew it would be Dopey), Cinderella’s obsessive compulsive cleaning and multiple personality disorder, a slyly wicked shot at Disney when Queen Lily starts singing old Mary Poppin’s songs after suffering probable cranial damage by driving her head through a brick wall, but these are all just too far apart, too few.
Gone are the moments in Shrek where you will press pause and say “I didn’t just see that, did I? I have to watch that again.”
Gone are the belly laughs where a Gingerbread Man hawks a loogey into his torturer’s eye and yells “EAT ME!".
Gone are the majority of the relevant cultural references. No Matrix or Lord Of The Rings jibes here; No Aliens or C.O.P.S or White Bronco. We have instead, a rehashed Versarchery sign, an old Chorus Line routine and a somewhat amusing Six Million Dollar Man montage.
In truth, I also missed the big, over the top, production number that use to close out the film. There is no “Hero” here, no “All Star”.

One major difference is the elevation of Chris Miller. This is a gentleman who wrote some of the additional background dialogue in the first two films as well as supplying some of the vocal work. On Shrek 3 he is given a full screenwriting credit as well as being the new director, a position he has never held before. Hopefully this will be a problem rectified on Shrek Goes Fourth with the introduction of Mike Mitchell who cut his directing chops with some SpongeBob Squarepants as well as a much overlooked and forgotten controversial show called Greg The Bunny. However as much as I want to blame the director for the problems in Shrek 3, I just can’t. The majority of my scorn goes to the writers who have grown fat and happy and complacent.

The writing in the first two movies was wickedly funny with out any forced laughter.
Fine lines such as “Five Shillings for the possessed talking Toy” as Pinocchio is being sold in to slavery or Shreks’ classic “Oh, no no no no. Dead broad OFF the table!” when he discovers the dwarves stashing Snow White in his kitchen, were given a dead pan delivery and produced honest mirth.
Now it’s obvious that the writers are trying to go for the easy laugh, giving us lines like “The only thing you’ll ever be king of is King Of The Stupids!”...
You can either insert cricket noises or a generic 80’s TV laugh track after that one. It just doesn’t work most of the time. A shame.
The writers, who obviously did their homework in the first 2 films, have decided to rest on their laurels, a sin that I almost find unforgivable. These guys have been given far too many “attaboy’s” and they need something to shake them up. Previously, knots were tied neatly and no opportunity for lampoon was left unused. Now Stromboli, Pinocchio’s puppet master was never named and it’s almost as if no one even bothered to check up on him. Now, we have wasted most of the characters from Arthurian legend. None of these characters, so rich in back story, were even close to used to potential. Arthur could have been any Highschool boy, Lancelot and Guinevere? Unfulfilled characters. Merlin? A generic magician.

Extras:
There is nothing overly special in the Special Features. The technical goofs are always good and were almost funnier than the film. A documentary on how great the technology is getting was obvious enough. Arthur’s class yearbook (cheerleading squad, chess club etc) was a complete waste of time and the false bios and dedications were yet another example of forced laughter and bad writing.
Three “lost scenes” were shown with their story board presentation and it’s obvious why two of them were cut. They are convoluted and water down the story. The Highschool cafeteria scene seemed pretty funny and I wonder why it wasn’t included.

This is a Shrek that will make you simply smile, where we use to laugh out loud. There were a lot of good ideas that never saw full potential much like the movie's use of truly funny entertainers Regis Philbin, John Krasinski and Seth Rogan. I gave it three stars since I am comparing it with most other animated fare out there (and it really is just average) however if I compared it with the rest of the Shrek franchise it would get two… and I’d have to be in a pretty good mood to do it.