Revaluated: Shrek the Third (2007) 

   For the sixth edition of Revaluated, we will be heading to the genre of animated movies, more specifically, animated sequels. I never planned on reviewing an animated film before. I had initially believed that animated features wouldn't make for great material for this series. But there are a plethora of animated movies that deserve coverage in this series. I decided to cover a film that I had adored as a child but looking back at it as an adult, I sigh at the thought of this particular film and say, "Oh damn, this did not age well." There is a laundry list of films that could fit that description. (Scooby-Doo, Star Wars Episode 1, or Chicken Little) But I ultimately decided to give coverage to one of DreamWorks Animation's low points, Shrek the Third. 

Original Shrek design and Chris Farley (1964-1997)

  Shrek needs no introduction at all, as anyone who grew up in the early 2000s knows who this lovable green ogre is, but what most people don't know is how he came to be. Shrek had his humble beginnings in a 1990 children's book of the same by William Steig. Steven Spielberg had acquired the rights for the book, intending to adapt it into an animated feature with his short-lived animation studio Amblimation. However, the rights went to a newly founded DreamWorks in 1995. Producer John H. Williams brought the book to founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, who showed interest in the concept. The film was put on development, with SNL veteran Chris Farley cast in the titular role and recorded 90% of the dialogue. However, Farley's untimely demise from an overdose in 1997 forced the studio to restart the project and recast the role with another SNL veteran, Mike Myers. For those who are morbidly curious, you can find the original voice recording in the form of a two-and-a-half-minute story reel available on YouTube, along with several other animation tests, artwork, and videos that cover the Chris Farley version that almost happened. 

  The project turned into a CG animated feature with Mike Myers in the main role, along with the story and the cast, which originally had David Spade and Janeane Garofalo as Donkey and Princess Fiona respectively. The movie would release in 2001 to near-universal praise from both critics and audiences alike. It ushered in a new era of animation, kickstarting one of the biggest animated franchises of all time, and winning the first-ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. I call Shrek the "Don Quixote of animated movies" given how influential it became on CGI animated films and its satirical approach to fairy tales and Disney animated movies. 

  After the massive success of the first film, a sequel would release in 2004, Shrek 2. It had the green ogre go to the kingdom of Far Far Away to meet his wife's parents, all the while having to deal with Fairy Godmother, who plots to destroy his marriage and have Fiona turn back into her human self to marry Prince Charming. Having an all-star cast including the likes of new John Cleese, Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, Rupert Everett, and Jennifer Saunders, the film went down as an instant classic, becoming one of the best sequels ever produced the likes of Terminator 2 and Aliens, and becoming the highest-grossing animated feature at the time ($919.8 million). Its gross was surpassed by Toy Story 3 six years later, and again with Frozen in 2013.

 A third film in the series seemed inevitable, given the immense success of the previous movies. As a little boy who loved both films, I was beyond excited when commercials for the movie aired on TV. Boy, was I hopeful on that front. Looking back, I wish we would have gotten a better film that was worth all of the immense hype it received rather than the movie we got in theaters. The film's plot centers around Shrek, who after being crowned King of Far Far Away, seeks to find a successor and replacement after deeming himself unfit to be king. Prince Charming, in the meantime, plans to dethrone him in revenge for foiling his and his mother's plans in the second movie. 

  Shrek the Third was eventually released on May 18, 2007. It earned the best opening weekend for an animated feature ($121.6 million) and made $813.4 million in total. However, despite being an immense box office success, Shrek the Third was hailed as DreamWorks Animation's lowest point since Shark Tale. It earned mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike, becoming the lowest-rated film in the series. It got a measly 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critical consensus stating: 

"Shrek the Third has pop culture potshots galore, but at the expense of the heart, charm, and wit that made the first two Shreks classics." 

  The film also got a 58 on Metacritic, with audiences giving the film a "B+" on CinemaScore, the lowest audience rating in the series. The film became the poster child for terrible third films in a movie series, joining the likes of Alien 3, which had a famously troubled production, and X-Men The Last Stand, which proved to be an embarrassing conclusion to the Brian Singer trilogy. 

Shrek and Chronicles of Narnia director Andrew Adamson

  So what happened to Shrek the Third? why did it turn out to be such a disappointment? Well, the answer is quite simple; the director and writing staff changed. The director of the previous two films, Andrew Adamson, was too busy working on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005), so he was promptly replaced by Chris Miller, both in the director's chair and in the writing department. Miller is best known for voicing Kowalski in the Madagascar series and directing the Shrek spinoff Puss in Boots in 2011. The script was written by a team of four writers, those being the director himself, producer Aron Warner, the only animated film he ever wrote, and screenwriting duo Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. 

  Price and Seaman are best known for writing Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Doc Hollywood (1991) but are responsible for such cinematic bombs as Wild Wild West (1999), The Grinch (2000), and Shrek the Third (2007), which to this day stands as their latest writing effort. To give you an idea, the screenplay to the first movie got nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards (It lost to A Beautiful Mind, written by Akiva Goldsman), a distinction that is held by both the film and Toy Story 3. No other animated movie has been nominated for such an award since. Unlike the first film's script, Shrek the Third's screenplay is worthy of a Razzie award. 

  Shrek the Third does not reach the heights set by its predecessors. It feels more like a downgrade of such a beloved character turning into this corporate, soulless entertainment machine that lost all the meaning and heart he used to have. Shrek is now a parody of himself, a hollow shell of the great character he used to be, reduced into an overused meme for many years after his films concluded in 2010. Shrek the Third features your typical celebrity voice cast, this time they managed to get Justin Timberlake, Eric Idle, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, and Ian McShane, all of who have been talented in their respective professions, but even an all-star cast with the best chemistry can't save your movie if the screenplay is terrible and the direction is utterly joyless.  

  Shrek the Third has a lot of bad humor, consisting of pop culture references and jokes that are borderline tasteless, mean-spirited, childish, and just plain gross. It's a departure from the previous two films, as they featured a brilliant blend of adult humor with a touch of subtlety to them, which is what made both films such enduring works of animation, and even as an adult, still find these films appealing to watch again. The humor in Shrek the Third feels childish and dated, over-relying on references to other movies and excessive use of gross-out and messed-up humor. Examples of this humor are the scenes where Shrek accidentally injures a knight with a sword, causes the deaths of civilians aboard a ship, and where its hull is destroyed unintentionally by Shrek when he tries to stop the boat from going, and it catches fire for some reason. 

  Aside from having humor that was outdated even by 2007, Shrek the Third features too many characters and a forgettable villain. Most of these new characters, the fairy tale princesses and villains, don't serve much of a purpose to the main story other than to help the characters advance with their plans or help them out of a hairy situation. Probably the worst offender out of all these new characters, aside from Merlin, who is an unfunny, useless fuck that only serves to advance the plot, are the ogre babies themselves. 

  The ogre babies were hyped in the commercials, McDonald's toys, and every other type of promotion advertised during that time, it seemed by the looks of it that they would play an important role in the plot, but they didn't. They only appear in three or four scenes in the entire movie. One of these scenes involves Shrek being hurled a massive blast of green vomit from a carriage. Such are the lows the humor in this movie reaches. Perhaps they could have played a part in Shrek's fear of fatherhood, but they serve no purpose to the plot other than to provide the cliched happy ending to the movie and are generally pointless characters. 

  

 The villain in Shrek the Third is Prince Charming, a recycled character from the previous film. He feels like a drastic downgrade from the villains in the previous two films. He isn't as memorable and hilarious as Lord Farquuad or as glamourous and entertaining as Fairy Godmother. As much as Charming lacks the characteristics that make a compelling and hilarious villain in an animated film such as this, he at least has a clear and justified motivation to exact vengeance on Shrek for destroying the high life he used to have, as well as foil his and his mother's plans. 

  Another glaring issue that Shrek the Third displays prominently throughout its entire runtime is the horribly misguided use of songs for its soundtrack. The previous movies contained songs from well-known artists, and even catapulting Smash Mouth into roaring success thanks to songs featured in the first movie. The first two movies used these songs to fit them into the narrative, carefully handpicked for them to capture the mood and feel of the scene. Shrek the Third's soundtrack feels misused and badly implemented in the required scenes. Notable examples of these poor song choices include the use of Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" in the scene of King Harold's funeral. Not only does the song feel out of place in a scene that is supposed to be sad, but there is also nothing sad about the James Bond theme itself. The worst offenders are the use of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song"; they butcher the timing of the iconic screams and proceed to discard the song completely in favor of Heart's "Barracuda"; they couldn't even use the original version, so they instead went for a carbon copy cover version of the song by Fergie. And for the scene where Shrek seems to have lost, a scene that is supposed to be dour and dreary, they use Damien Rice's "9 Crimes", a song about infidelity that doesn't fit the tone of the scene. Hell, "Something in the Way" by Nirvana would have been a more appropriate song to use for this scene. 

  Although Shrek the Third suffers from a laundry list of issues, one of the few bright lights in this movie is the character of Artie, who is voiced by Justin Timberlake. Artie is perhaps the only character that gets any form of decent development in this film. He is the typical high school loser who is poised to become Shrek's successor, which gives us an interesting look at how he will adjust and grow as a person by the end of the film. He shares a scene with Shrek where they talk about how their fathers were rough and neglectful, not being the loving fathers they wanted them to be. Sadly, the impact of this scene is ruined by a script that is too preoccupied with unfunny shenanigans that are often painful to watch and a huge piss stain on the legacy of Shrek. 

  In the aftermath, a sequel would be released in 2010 titled Shrek Forever After, (In the teaser posters it was titled Shrek: The Final Chapter), which ignores the events of the third film. You can watch the first two movies and skip to the fourth one and you wouldn't be missing a single thing from that movie. Although Shrek Forever After received mixed reviews from critics, the consensus among audiences, fans, and critics alike was that this was a far better film than the previous one and it felt like the proper third film in the series. Now looking back at Shrek the Third, I think of it as a very weak sequel, not the worst animated sequel I've seen but definitely not an animated work of art by a mile. To give a better perspective, I'd rank this movie among the worst DreamWorks movies, just above Shark Tale, The Boss Baby, and Home. If there was any silver lining to this movie, I can give it a rewatch every once in a while. 

  Chockful of outdated, lowbrow humor and lacking the wit and charm that made its predecessors classics, Shrek the Third is a painful reminder of how the third film in the series will always be considered to be embarrassing and downright disappointing. Young viewers will most certainly find some entertainment value in this movie, but for adults, it's little more than a passable diversion. 

No copyright infringement is intended with the use of these images. All images belong to their respective owners. Information was obtained from Box Office Mojo, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, and Shrek the Third (2007).