‘Shrek Forever After’: Review Revue

The good news for Shrek lovers: there’s finally one more film in the franchise! The good news for Shrek haters: the series is finally over. “Shrek Forever After,” which opens tomorrow, is purportedly the final installment in Shrek’s four-movie run–the ads bill the movie as “The Final Chapter.” The films, which star Mike Myers in the title role, Eddie Murphy as Donkey, and Cameron Diaz as Princess Fiona, have been huge box office hits. Speakeasy still thinks that if “Shrek Forever After” is a smash, the big green ogre will find another way to write a new chapter in his story. The latest movie finds Shrek tricked by Rumpelstiltskin into magically making it as if his current life had never happened. And did we mention it’s in 3-D? So far, reviewers seem less than ogre-whelmed. Here’s what the critics have had to say so far:

“Everyone involved fulfills his or her job requirements adequately. But the magic is gone, and ‘Shrek Forever After’ is no longer an ogre phenomenon to reckon with. Instead, it’s a ‘Hot Swamp Time Machine,’” [Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly]


“By the middle of the second act, ‘Forever After’ finally finds its groove, becoming mildly amusing (the actors—Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas—are in fine form) but never rising to the inspired heights of the original. And the 3-D effects are so weak as to bring nothing to the table,” [Ernest Hardy, The Village Voice]

“Dreamworks seems bored with the ogre who laid the golden egg. ‘Shrek Forever After,’ the fourth film in the lucrative franchise, barely tampers with the Shrek formula (one-liners, flatulence jokes, pop tunes) and not enough to breathe life into the exhausted series,” [Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel]

“While there’s some suspense in whether Shrek will be able to break Rumpelstilstskin’s contract with an out clause that posits the power of a loving kiss, there’s also a sense of filmmakers searching for whatever will help fill the running time. Ninety-three minutes isn’t a long time, but some of it passes very, very slowly,”