Not bad, but going downhill

Rating: 5/10 (30 June 2007)

I thought the first Shrek movie was brilliant, I thought the second was pretty good. I think the third is....OK.
This time round the King of Far Far Away dies and tells SHrek he's next in line for the throne. Shrek is more than a little dubious of this as all he wants to do is take Fiona back to his swamp. The King tells him the only other heir is Arthur, so Shrek, Donkey and Puss in Boots all go to his High School to get him and bring him back to be King. Meanwhile Prince Charming is bitter at not getting his Happily Ever After so he gathers all the bad guys from fairy tales to seize the castle and crown himself King and with Shrek away Fiona has to fight with her mother, Cinderella, Snow White and Beauty (who i thought was from Beauty and the Beast even though she kept falling asleep, it still took me forever to work out it was Sleeping Beauty!! duh) Somewhere along the way Shrek and co meets Merlin who transports them back to Far Far Away after the get shipwrecked, but he also switches Donkey and Puss' bodies round. Watching Donkey trying the doe eyed look is certainly something, as seen in the trailer.
I was giggling most of the way through because there were lots of little funny bits all the way through, such as the aforementioned doe eyed looked and Eric Idle as a slightly eccentric Merlin was somehow the perfect pairing but it's just not as good as the other two.
There is even less plot than the other two, although it doesn't really need much of a plot but all the jokes kind of felt repetitive. We've already seen the Shrek can't fit in because he's an ogre jokes. We've seen the Donkey being dumb stuff. The emphasis isn't on the old clichés quite as much, simply because they've done them all. The jokes are mainly visual now rather than the characters saying funny things. Mike Myers still has one of the best Scottish accents I've heard and I don't think Eddie Murphy is really suited to anything OTHER than Donkey any more because whenever I see him in anything recently all I can think is "Donkey" because he's so over the top. When I heard Justin Timberlake was in this I thought "Oh crap!" but his character is pretty good and he does well. Fiona isn't really anything new and quite frankly I don't think she was really used as much as she could have been (all she really did was tell the princesses they'd need to fight and grimace when Shrek made a mistake), but then again there's not much you could do with her, it's a three man show with Shrek, Donkey and Puss now.
It's a family movie so young kids could go see it but there should be enough to keep older kids and adults amused too. All in all it was enjoyable, I giggled most of the way through and laughed a few times but I hope there isn't a fourth one, three is more than enough.