The fourth "Shrek" movie finds everyone's favorite ogre getting exhausted from his married life with children, and so strikes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin, with horrible consequences that has Shrek racing against time to get back the life he loves.
Wow. This has been a long quadrilogy. I remember where I was when I saw the first Shrek, way back in 2001. I was not especially pleased. Then the second one came out in 2004. It was much better. Then the third, which I actually saw a few hours ago, after I saw this fourth one. The third one was painfully forgettable. But I digress. This last Shrek tried to bring together what made the movies unique, but fell prey to what happens to so many of these series: repetition and crowding.
The concept of the "Shrek" franchise is brilliant: fairy tale satire. It was achieved best in the second movie because the filmmakers still had a lot fairy tales to work with and gags to pull: there was the Puss in Boots, the Prince Charming, the Fairy Godmother, Pinocchio, the Frog Prince, and many other little nuggets of fairy tale gold. They also axed the excessive gross humor of the first and focused more on wit. The problem with this fourth one is they basically ran out of ideas. Sure, we have the witches. That was good, but how long can that go on? We have Rumpelstiltskin, but he is pretty straightforward. The story was stolen from "It's a Wonderful Life," and the movies have been spaced out far enough where you can get away with a few repeated jokes. The concept is tired.
The other problem is the overcrowding of characters. No voice actor gets more than a few lines, it seemed, and there was just a crowd of witches and ogres. There were a few standouts in this gumbo of faces: Kathy Griffin as a witch, Jane Lynch as an ogre (who sadly had only one line where you can actually tell its her), and Craig Robinson as an ogre. In the second movie, we were introduced to King Harold, Prince Charming, Puss in Boots, and the fabulous Jennifer Saunders as The Fairy Godmother. Those were memorable characters. No one will remember any one witch or ogre from this fourth film.
Like the third Shrek, this movie wasn't terribly "bad," it was just very flat. There wasn't anything I felt I hadn't seen already.
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