Happily Ever After

Rating: 8/10 (5 July 2010)

I'm a big fan of the first two Shrek movies. The first Shrek, in particular, was a hilarious, heartfelt and original delight. Whilst Shrek 2 couldn't match the first film's originality, it was still a hugely enjoyable piece of entertainment. With Shrek The Third, the franchise ground to a halt. I don't hate Shrek The Third; I just find it sluggish, stuffed with too many characters and lacking ideas. So, it was with some trepidation that I approached Shrek Forever After.
Thankfully, Shrek Forever After is a fitting finale for the franchise; it is very funny, sweet and, through a nice Wonderful Life-like twist, it shows us the characters we all know and love in a different light.
Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) is having a midnight crisis. Despite living happily with his wife Fiona (voice of Cameron Diaz) and their three children, Shrek longs for the days when he was feared by the townspeople, instead of the tourist attraction that he has now become. After Shrek's pent-up anger is unleashed during his daughter's first birthday, he is tricked by the devious Rumpelstiltskin into signing a deal which will allow him to live as a real ogre for one day at the expense of one day from his life. In his "ogre" day, Shrek realised that Rumpelstiltskin has stolen the day he was born; this means that Shrek never met Donkey, Puss in Boots or any of his other friends, and he didn't save Fiona from the tower. Shrek soon finds his friends, but they're not how he remembers them. Together, they must battle against Ruimpelstiltskin, who has taken over Far Far Away, and Shrek must find a way to reverse Rumpelstiltskin's magic before his day is over, or he will disappear from existence.
Shrek Forever After succeeds where Shrek the Third failed because it returns to the charm of its characters and its story. Shrek the Third relied more on its (admittedly eye-popping) visuals, hit-and-miss pop-culture jokes and stunt casting (hello, Mr. Timberlake) than on creating a strong story or in taking its characters on an entertaining, interesting journey. Shrek Forever After rectifies all of these mistakes; the pop-culture gags are few and far in-between, with most of the film's humour coming from characters and their situations. There is no obvious stunt casting here, but that works to the film's advantage. Ever heard of Walt Dohrn? No, me neither. But he damn near steals the film as the tricky Rumpelstiltskin, his vocal performance a blast of snivelling razzmatazz. Plus, new director Mike Mitchell and screenwriters Josh Klausner and Darren Lemke do funny, new things with familiar characters. For example, whereas Puss in Boots was a swarthy swashbuckler, in the alternate universe he resembles a balloon covered in fur, who can't move without it being an Olympian task (one moment where he's struggling to, um, lick himself leads to the funniest use of his famous "ahhhh" eyes in the series). Whereas Fiona is a tired housewife in Shrek's real universe, in the alternate universe she is the tough, sexy (hey, I'm a hot-blooded male) rebel leader of the Ogre resistance against Rumpelstiltskin. Mitchell, Klausner and Lemke clearly have a lot of fun twisting our expectations of what the characters will do or what will happen to them, and I had a lot of fun with them. There is one death scene (shock!) which comes out of mid-field, and is even more hilarious as a result.
The vocal work is strong. Mike Myers excels here as Shrek; he brings a real sense of human weariness and sarcastic wit to a fairytale character, which grounds him in reality. Shrek's midlife struggle with the loss of the spark in his life before he met Fiona will ring true with many viewers; many people, in the middle of a marriage, will look back on their freer days with a sense of nostalgia and wish they could re-live them again. Shrek's fault is that he doesn't realise what he has until he loses it. Cameron Diaz excels in both personalities; the tired but loving wife and the Xena-like warrior, the latter in which she particularly seems to be letting loose and having a lot of fun. Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas are their usual hilarious selves, both of them taking advantage of their characters and their new situations, with Banderas relishing his character's pampered lifestyle as Fiona's pet and Murphy still getting big laughs out of his chatterbox sidekick. The supporting cast is filled with talented actors, most notably Craig Robinson, Glee's Jane Lynch and Mad Men's Jon Hamm as members of the Ogre resistance.
The animation here is beautifully done and highly detailed. One caveat; as anyone who has seen the advertising knows, this film is being shown in 3D. The 3D isn't a distraction, as in Alice in Wonderland and (from what I've heard) Clash of the Titans; it's just doesn't necessarily add anything either. It's just there. In Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon, the 3D deepened the sense of immersion into an imaginary world. Here, it seems more perfunctory than anything else. So my advice is to see this in 2D and save your money.
Shrek Forever After erases the disappointment of Shrek the Third. There is a familiarity to the story which stops it from reaching the heights of the first film, but it is enjoyable enough to be on the same level as Shrek 2. This is a thoroughly entertaining conclusion to the Shrek legacy, and I'm going to miss the big guy.