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This Film On

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Shrek the Third

(2007)

93 min. DreamWorks Animation. Directors: Chris Miller, Raman Hui. Cast: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews.

The original Shrek was built around potshots at the Disney legacy, and second sequel Shrek the Third resuscitates this agenda. The Disney-bashing, however, doesn't go down so easy when the crappy, insincere alternative is Shrek the Third, an even more creatively exhausted sequel than Shrek 2.

The first joke in the picture comes as one of the characters heckles Prince Charming's stage show: "This is worse than Love Letters!" The joke is a measure of the picture's panicky quest to entertain adults and kids at the same time, but if you get the A.R. Gurney gag, it's unlikely you'll go for most of the rest of the picture, which is aimed squarely at the three-foot set. Excepting, of course, the scene where a transsexual punches out a woman—that's fun for the whole family.

As Shrek and Fiona settle into married life, contemplate children, and provisionally fill the shoes of royalty, Charming (voice of Rupert Everett) gathers the villains around Far Far Away and promises them their long denied "happily ever after." "There are two sides to every story," he blusters. "And ours has never been told." Not quite true, but let's say you roll with it. What follows is an unpleasant regurgitation of the first picture's entertainment gambits: scatological humor, self-aware cutesy animals, old-is-new humor ("Ye Olde Foot Locker"—is this even a joke?), and a music-clearance bill that could feed sub-Saharan Africa for a decade.

The amusing vocal work of Everett and Antonio Banderas (Puss in Boots) has never seemed more wastefully applied. Bringing a bit of new energy, Justin Timberlake does his teenybopping best as king-apparent and being-yourself poster-boy Arthur Pendragon, but the rest of the cast—including stars Mike Meyers, Cameron Diaz, and Eddie Murphy—is strictly on autopilot. The good bits: the Gingerbread Man's life flashing before his eyes, the trailer-spoiled routine of Pinocchio obfuscating his lies to rein in his nose, and a mildly irreverent sequence of a not-quite-dead-yet frog repeatedly croaking.

Even these best bits are sloppy seconds from Shrek's misunderstood artistic godfathers, Monty Python. Once John Cleese exits the picture, in comes Eric Idle as Merlin. For disembodied old-age pensioners, the two are still pretty amusing, but they're clearly slumming in this picture, as are a clutch of creative contributors and consultants that include original Shrek co-director Andrew Adamson and Oscar-winning screenwriter Ted Tally. No one but patrons with fistfuls of dollars can save this cash grab from itself.