Darkmatters Review: Shrek Forever After (The Final Chapter)

Shrek Forever After (PG)

Dir. Mike Mitchell

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

This is the end of the road, the last hurrah, the green stops here – yes, it’s finally ogre… The good news is that Shrek Forever After (also known as Shrek: The Final Chapter on some of the posters) brings the much loved and massively box-office friendly Shrek series to a decent end.

New the Shrek-verse is director Mike ‘ Sky High’ Mitchell and he takes Shrek (Mike Myers) to a place that older viewers will be able to relate to – his midlife crisis. Think ‘American Beauty’ just bigger and greener with our hero feeling trapped in his ‘perfect’ marriage to the feisty Fiona (Cameron Diaz). Shrek longs for past days when he was feared by the townsfolk and free to terrorise, mud bath and generally exercise his inner ogre at will. The day to day grind of a highly domesticated existence sees Shrek make a foolhardy magical deal with the devious Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn), who has a longstanding grudge against him.

The alternate reality in which Shrek finds himself is a place where he never met Fiona, doesn’t know Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and hasn’t settled down. To make matters worse Stitskin has made himself king of Far Far Away and if Shrek doesn’t find a way to make Fiona fall in love with him again before sunrise – his very existence will be deleted from history.
So with the clock ticking and his former allies either not knowing him or in Puss in Boots’ (Antonio Banderas) case – so fat and lazy as to rendered almost useless – things look bleak.

Could Shrek being going out like a wuss after all?
Rumpelstiltskin makes a good short notice baddie and the animation is as great as it ever was, this time in 3D too which works well. Shrek Forever After rollicks along at a good pace and is certainly better than the Shrek The Third, but this isn’t a classic and doesn’t rouse the audience to a fever pitched send off for the big green hero.

There are some good laughs along the way, my pick being an annoying kid called ‘Butterpants’ who dogs Shrek at a party continually requesting the ogre to “Do the roar!” and is hard to impress.
Shrek has the distinction of being the biggest grossing animated series of films ever (untouched even by the mighty Toy Story flicks) – this would be a good place to end now before the law of decreasing returns bites too hard.

UNSEEN DELETED SCENE:

Woody from Toy Story gets transported to Far Far Away and has to team up with Shrek to fight off Monsters vs Aliens...

Darkmatters rating: ööööööö (7 solid baby ogres out of 10)

Darkmatters quick reference guide: Action 7 / Style 7 / Babes 3 / Comedy 8 / Horror 5 / Spiritual Enlightenment 4

Check out another review here (Den of Geek)