Movie Review: Shrek The Third

Much the same as with the Spiderman franchise, I admit I'm not the biggest fan of the Shrek movies. Sure, the first two had some pretty funny parts, but I never really found the Donkey character amusing as much as just plain annoying, and I've always had a real problem enjoying any movie featuring the "talents" of Antonio Banderas.

Still, I had high hope for the third of what will probably be an endless series of Shrek movies, Shrek the Third. The previews had some funny scenes, and I figured they'd continue, or even improve, on the cultural references that make the movies worthwhile for adults. They also brought Eric Idle on board, and I figured he'd probably be pretty funny.

I went to the 6 o'clock showing at my neighborhood cineplex; the theater was about 2/3 full. First, the good -- the computer-generated animation was incredible; I sometimes forgot I was watching CGI. Now, the bad. The movie is billed as a comedy, but at the end I realized that I hadn't laughed once. It turns out that essentially all the funny parts were in the trailers, so I didn't see anything that surprised me in a humorous way. The target audience (8 year old kids) seemed quite amused, but even my teenage sons didn't really see any real humor in the story. The new characters (Merlin and Arthur) were incredibly badly written, and actively detracted from any enjoyment I had watching the film.

This is a movie to watch in the theater if you're a really big Mike Myers or Eddie Murphy fan, or if you have pre-teen kids who like Shrek. Overall, the only thing that keeps me from giving this movie "the finger" is the incredible animation; because of that, it gets two unfunny ogres out of five.