Shrek The Third

Shrek The Third is, as the name implies, the third Shrek movie and we've been to see it. This Summer's been a bit of a movie overfest, what with having seen Die Hard 4.0 and Fantastic Four: The Rise Of The Silver Surfer and with The Simpsons Movie, Transformers and the latest Harry Potter and more still to see. Anyway, back to Shrek The Third; here's the short description of the plot…

Fiona's father King Harold (John Cleese) is dying and Shrek (Mike Myers) is being groomed as the heir to the throne of Far, Far Away. However, Shrek doesn't want to leave his beloved swamp for a life at court so he sets off with Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) to find young Arthur Pendragon (Justin Timberlake), the next in line to the throne.

While Shrek's away, the scheming Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) gathers an army of thieves, witches, monsters and cutthroats and takes over the kingdom, imprisoning Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) and Queen Lillian (Julie Andrews). Can Shrek persuade Arthur to take the crown and get back in time to save Fiona and her mum or will those two fiesty gals have their own plans to retake the castle and oust Charming?

To sum it up simply, it could have been better. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad movie and there's plenty to laugh at in there but it just wasn't up at the same level of the first two movies. All of the favourite fairy tale characters are there - Donkey, Dragon, Puss in Boots, the Gingerbread man, Pinocchio and the Three Blind Mice as well as few others like Snow White, Cinderella and Rapunzel so the scope for laughs is as good as ever and there are quite a few very funny scenes, just not as many as I'd have liked.

There are two plots on the go. Shrek and Fiona want to get back to their swamp so Shrek heads off to find Arthur and convince him that the throne is his for the asking and Prince Charming wants to take over what he sees as his rightful crown and so seizes his chance when Shrek is away. Both are fairly simple and work quite well as vehicles for a fair amount of funny scenes so if you liked the first two movies, then you might well like this one too. It's not quite as good but we laughed enough to make it a worthwhile night out.

Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy
My Rating: 7/10