A Shrek wreck

Shrek the Third is the first movie in the increasingly tired Shrek series not to start with the pages of a storybook turning to tell a familiar fairy tale. Why is that? It’s probably because, unlike its predecessors, Shrek the Third doesn’t feature anything resembling a traditional fairy-tale plot, or even one clear and engaging enough for the movie’s presumed target audience—kids—to follow and get wrapped up in. That’s not to say that the movie doesn’t have a plot; if anything, it suffers from having way too much plot, a common problem among bloated blockbuster sequels that all abide by the philosophy that if people loved one hero, one sidekick and one villain, then they’ll really love three times as many.

Thus the loveable titular ogre (voiced by Mike Myers), already saddled with talking-animal sidekicks Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss In Boots (Antonio Banderas) and married to princess-turned-ogre Fiona (Cameron Diaz), acquires a horde of new friends and foes in this latest installment. Chief among them is the supremely uninteresting Artie (Justin Timberlake), cousin (or possibly unacknowledged half-brother?) to Fiona, and Shrek’s choice to succeed Fiona’s late father as the king of Far, Far Away, because the ogre himself would rather not rule.

Since Shrek and Fiona have become remarkably self-actualized over the course of the first two movies, accepting their inner beauty and loving themselves for who they are and whatnot, much of the burden of self-doubt shifts to Artie, who’s a teenage loser lacking confidence in his ability to rule a fairy-tale kingdom. Shrek spends much of the movie convincing Artie of his value as a human being, which is boring and unfunny and completely misses what was the heart of the previous films: the relationship between Shrek and Fiona.

This time around, the ogre pair, married and with some little ogres on the way, barely have any screen time together, as the plot splits between Shrek and Co.’s efforts to bring Artie back to the kingdom and the simultaneous invasion of said kingdom by the suddenly quite malicious Prince Charming (Rupert Everett), jilted by Fiona in Shrek 2. He puts together a team of fairy-tale villains and locks Fiona and her fellow princesses away, claiming the kingdom for himself.

That’s just a quick overview of what’s going on, all of it disjointed and haphazard and broken up by stale reiterations of pop-culture references and flatulence jokes from the previous installments. What started out as a genial stab at Disneyfied fairy tales has morphed into a catch-all parody with no focus and even less bite. It’s hard to buy into the movie making fun of anything when it’s become such an easy target for mockery itself.

The ending hastily tacks on some sort of life lesson, but it’s far from the simplicity of the original movie, which, despite its fairy-tale trappings, was a straightforward, old-fashioned romantic comedy. Kids will probably still laugh at the antics of the colorful characters, but they’ll be lost when it comes to figuring out why those characters are doing what they’re doing (and possibly confused by some of the rather grown-up issues faced by Shrek and his friends). Adults will just grit their teeth and try to think up excuses to not have to sit through Shrek the Fourth.

Shrek the Third

Directed by Chris Miller

Opens Friday