Poor addition to the series

Rating: 2/10 (3 July 2007)

I'll be straight and say it now ahead of the rest of my comment, the third installment in the Shrek movies is inferior to both of it's previous titles in the every way. It's quite a disappointment to have this title made the way it was. Everything about it is predictable but that's not the bad thing, both of the earlier Shrek movies were fairly predictable but were successful in executing it in a funny, comedic and sometimes suspenseful manner. Shrek the Third completely fails here. It is predictable without being funny, comedic or engaging. Shrek and Fiona also both suffer from character derailment and act unlike themselves from the previous movies. In Shrek 1, we saw Shrek easily beat up shinning knights in armor, take on crossbow tooting elf goons in the second film, but here in the Third he easily gives up when confronted by a few soldiers. Meanwhile Fiona has become practically useless. Other parts of the story are so contrived. Fiona, her mom the queen and several other fairy tale girls are locked up halfway through but do nothing to escape until the end when the Queen conveniently knocks down the jail walls with her head. Heck why didn't she do it earlier? It's almost as if the writers stuck them in there and couldn't think of a way to get them out and ended up with this instead.
And then there's the villain, Prince Charming. I honestly think it would have been better if they created a new villain from scratch because Prince Charming was portrayed as a vain airhead in Shrek 2 and it's so unbelievable when he easily turns a tavern full of depressed fairy tale villains to his side with a few words. Even more insane, at the end, the lost heir Arthur, also with a few naive words, convinces said tavern villains to throw down their weapons and make up.
Ultimately, this leads to the rather poor and naive message of the movie regarding what people think of you and how it does not matter what other people think as long as you know yourself. Well guess what? Pretty much all the world's mass murderers, dictators, serial killers etc etc acted like that.
All in all, I felt my money was wasted on this movie. The only upside is that I watched it on the same day I caught Transformers: The Movie which allowed me to see just how much of a mish-mash, half-cocked job they pulled on Shrek the Third. Don't watch this movie people, especially Shrek fans. You WILL be disappointed.