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Shrek (Mike Myers) and Donkey (Eddie Murphy) freak out Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) in “Shrek Forever After.” |
“Shrek Forever After,” the third and supposedly final sequel in the popular fractured fairy tale franchise, still packs plenty of green entertainment power.
It offers up the expected barrage of witty lines, pop culture references, sight gags and songs played for comic effect. It brings back Shrek, Donkey, Fiona and Puss in Boots for one more round of merriment.
But you know the series is running out of inspiration when it resorts to using an ogre’s midlife crisis as a premise, then baldly steals its plot from the classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” in which a despondent Jimmy Stewart contemplates suicide before an angel shows him what the world would be like had he never been born.
Shrek, that green glob of gelatinous goodness voiced by Mike Myers, doesn’t want to be lovable anymore.
No. He wants to be feared.
He wants people to run away from him in stark terror.
He wants to frighten children so he can steal food from their picnic baskets.
What the heck has happened to Shrek?
He’s in the throes of a midlife crisis. He hates the drudgery of everyday life, changing diapers of his three belching, pooping babies and forgetting how sexy his wife Fiona (Cameron Diaz) used to be in her prime princess period. He hates being beloved.
“I’m just a jolly green joke!” Shrek shrieks. (Read more…)