recycling

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 2011)

They had to take this tale a few steps back in order to make a 4th version of it. The first one sounded fresh in how it reused popular cosmologies borrowed from the sweet corner of children's oriented stories. The second one floated over that and played an interesting game of twisted self-reference(s). That was the best. The comedy was in the out references and how the filmmakers played with them. The form itself was funny, more than the jokes or the characters.
Now this 4th version needs to make a story about how the romantic story involving the ogre and the princess has to happen again. So the story is literally reset to the very start, before Shrek knew Fiona, or the donkey, or before the cat was a recognizable character.
I admit the device works to revive the freshness of the first film, after the disaster of the third one. If you play along and want to get nostalgic about that one, made 10 years ago, you can enter the game and have a few laughs. The cleverness of the device allows you to do that. But there's not much happening here, apart from that.
The characters are as tired by now as poor Shrek at the beginning of the film when he punches the table.
My opinion: 2/5
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