blaHCL Presents

Finally!!! After an agonizing month without seeing ANY of the Movie Madness in May, I finally managed to catch up with Shrek the Third. So how was the movie you ask? It’s got some funny bits here and there, but overall it failed to deliver the same comedic elements from the previous two installments, and is a rather forgettable flick.

It really was a pity because I truely enjoyed the predecessors of Shrek the Third. It was sort of the Scary Movie or Epic Movie of the animation genre. It didn’t shy away from referencing anything from Hollywood tabloids (e.g. Sir Justin on Fiona’s bedroom ceiling) to classic films/animations (e.g. oh come on, that’s too obvious). That was rarely seen in this installment. Yes, from the trailer we can tell there’s a reference to King Arthur’s tale… but even that was strongly down-played.

Perhaps the formula is getting old, and DreamWorks realized it and tried to change things a little. But it just wasn’t well-executed. Some of the supposedly laugh-out-loud moments were at most met with a heh. It did get a few chuckles out of me when the Queen, at one point in the movie, began humming tunes from Marry Poppins. A very nice homage to her voiceover talent - Julie Andrews. Another nice in-joke was the “stage show” towards the end of the movie - the opening sequence is clearly a homage to, well, a movie you’re watching. But that was probably the better jokes planted throughout. The rest of them? Mostly slap-stick jokes… (Far Far Away becomes Go Go Away. Har!)

The music choice/composition was also superb in the previous two Shreks. It’s hard to forget the heartfelt moment in Shrek One, backed with Rufus Wainwright’s Hallelujah, and who can forget Jennifer Sounders’ Holding Out For A Hero intertwined with Harry Gregson-Williams-composed Shrek theme? That was an absolute classic!

There are a few good songs in Shrek 3, but nothing really stands out. The music style and song choice felt repetitive and the movie score didn’t quite end with the bang as it did in the previous two. Even the end-credit segment seemed a bit tagged-on. There’s no “concert-extravaganza” as seen in Shrek and Shrek 2. The cast is also rather weak - not the actual voice talents, cuz that’s pretty big for an animation, but the animated ones. Not much memorable new characters, and many recurring roles felt signifcantly watered-down, and they fell flat… on their face. Hard (literally for one new chracter, which was an outright bad slap-stick joke. Like this one.). It just doesn’t quite live up to the expectation built up by its predecessors.

Seeing the way Shrek the Third ended, I wouldn’t be surprised if we are greeted with Shrek “Four”ever sometime down the line. Let’s just hope by then DreamWorks can spice up the story a little, and inject the series with some fresh new idea/jokes. Shrek really needs some refreshing. Fast!