Shrek Forever After: Movie Review

My wife is constantly amazed that I seem to know plot points or at least memorable sequences to almost every movie I have ever seen. This has served me well, especially when categorizing my favorite films or deciding if I want to watch one film over another. Sometimes a movie comes along that I don’t really remember. Such is the case with the Shrek films. Whenever I remember anything about the Shrek movies, for some reason it always comes from the first one. Other than that, the rest all kind of run together and there is nothing really special or memorable about any of them. Unfortunately such is the case with Shrek Forever After. After a whole week has gone by, there is very little I remember about the film at all.

According to my notes, this Shrek finds our title hero giving up a day in his life so he can be an Ogre again. I know that this is a made up animated movie, but I can’t for the life of me remember or figure out how this worked or what the reason was behind it. Shrek supposedly wanted to be mean again, but I never remember him being all that scary to begin with. Anyway, Rumplestilskin is the guy who performs this deed and gives him a day, but something-something happens and Shrek has to do something before the day is through or he’ll never go back to the way it was. Now its never hard to suspend disbelief in a Shek movie, but even my fantastical suspension couldn’t get over this horrid plot which is basically It’s a Wonderful Life, with ogres.

There were some great parts for the kids. I went with my son who laughed out loud at some parts and even repeated some lines. Unfortunately, I don’t even remember chuckling that much. That was kind of a let down considering Shrek has always been good at eliciting laughs. I really wanted to see a comedy. What did happen though was totally unexpected. The movie was actually fairly moving. I wasn’t expecting to feel so proud of being a dad or so lucky to have the family I do. Granted, It’s a Wonderful Life does a much better job of this, but when it sneaks out of know where, it kind of gets you.

As far as the animation goes…. it’s adequate. It looks exactly the same as the first Shrek, which came out almost 10 years ago. I’m glad they kept the look consistent but c’mon guys; there is a decades worth of technological advances you could have used here. We did see this version in 3-D and other than a few gimmicks, I’m not sure it actually added anything to the visual experience for me. The Voices were adequate as well and the directing…well, adequate. I guess that is the best way to describe Shrek Forever After, adequate. Unfortunately, adequate won’t pull you out of the forgetful hole that Shrek 2 and 3 sunk into. Luckily, there is a little bit of emotion to go with this one.

Final Consensus:
See it now!!!!
See it in theaters!!!
Rent it on DVD/BluRay!!
Wait for it on TV!
Don’t Bother

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