Updated May 28: If Shrek seems to be having a bit of an identity crisis in his new movie, maybe it’s because the DreamWorks/Paramount marketing people couldn’t seem to ever figure out what to call the fourth installment in the studio’s biggest franchise.
It started out as “Shrek Goes Fourth,” and then became “Shrek Forever After,” I thought. But lately, and right up until opening day today, I saw just as many ads on TV and in newspapers, and on websites (including home page on IMAX), in which it appeared that the title is “Shrek: The Final Chapter.”
And then, as if they couldn’t decide what to call it, they ran opening day ads that offered no title whatsoever.
Well, whatever it’s called, the latest Shrek movie delivers some of the best use of 3D in an animated movie that I have seen to date, especially in the IMAX version that I saw in a mini-IMAX AMC theater. Not necessarily the most dynamic — it still doesn’t come off the screen and into the audience as I would prefer — but despite what some critics said was almost negligible use of 3D except in a couple gratuitous scenes, I found the 3D to be used very effectively from the opening moments showing horses pulling the Royal carriage and right on through almost every shot. It wasn’t distracting; it made everything more visually appealing and immersive, pulling me in closer to each scene.
Update: Despite significantly increased ticket prices of as much as $20 at some theaters, IMAX pulled in about 7% ($5 mil.) of the overall weekend gross of $71.3 mil. Although it faces competition over the Memorial Day weekend from “Sex and the City 2” and “Prince of Persia,” its kid-friendly family appeal distinguishes it from the newcomers, which should be significant on a holiday weekend.
By the third episode, the Shrek series seemed to be getting sillier, throwing in too many new characters, and getting further away from the cleverness and charm of the original. This one gratefully reigns some of that in a bit. But there is still a dearth of the pop culture references and satirical elements that made the first one so fun. The writers seemed to have lost the funny. Donkey doesn’t have a single funny line, which is amazing when you remember how many times you laughed out loud at his snarky comments in the first movie. The result is a more seemingly unintentionally solemn tone and even moments where it gets a little heavy, or at least dreary and dull.
And like many sequels that resort to throwing tons of copies of the main attraction at you, like hundreds of aliens in “Aliens” and dozens of iron men in “Iron Man 2,” this one falls back on the same formula by introducing a whole bunch of giant green ogres. But just as it worked in those movies, it works here pretty well.
And just as Sylvester Stallone restored a little credibility to his Rocky character by coming back with a much improved “Rocky Balboa” to help wash out the bitter taste of “Rocky V,” “Shrek Forever After” is a fitting “Final Chapter” to the series that is probably responsible for saving DreamWorks Animation in the early days of the studio.
— Scott Hettrick