Shrek the Third

The first Shrek made about half a billion dollars and won an Oscar. The creatively limp second edition in 2004 should have been called Drek, but nearly doubled that box office figure anyway, guaranteeing we would be wallowing in the ogre business for years to come. Now comes Shrek the Third—which brings more of the same in a compact 81 minutes—an improvement on 2 but a far cry from the freshness of the first. This time, the (very funny) death of the Frog King (John Cleese) means his crown is going to be passed on to Shrek (Mike Myers), who is now happily married to Fiona (Cameron Diaz) but still clearly has a lot of self-image problems and knows he must find someone else to rise to the throne instead. With the help of scene-stealer Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and ladies' cat Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas), he sets sail to do just that, focusing on not-quite-there Artie (a new character voiced by Justin Timberlake). While matters of succession get sorted out, the duplicitous Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) and his band of villains plan to take over the kingdom if they can get past a gang of women (Cinderella, Rapunzel, etc.) who have plans of their own. Unfortunately, there is a strong sense of "been there, done that" to a lot of this (even the expert animation seems rather ho-hum). Of course, it doesn't really matter in the end, since green isn't just the color of ogres. It also represents the cold hard cash studio execs can again expect to reap, no matter how often they repeat the same basic joke.