mockingly referencing is not story telling

Rating: Null/10 (6 December 2004)

Essentially this movie tries to follow the success recipe of its pre-decessor by mocking the "disney-clean" world of fairy tales while winking at American culture where possible.
However, while in "Shrek" everything was kept together by a dominant storyline "Shrek 2" seems to just paddle along somehow with no sense of direction. Often one gains the sensation that the story is being improvised as the plot crawls on even finding itself in dead ends (the journey to "the land of far far away" summarizes the experience of focusing on the plot to some extend).
Worse even, this movie merely repeats the moral message of its predecessor ("love goes deeper than the layer of appearance") instead of finding any kind of moral spine of its own.
Intermittently entertaining, mostly boring, overall disappointing.