Shrek the Third Reviews
Top Critic
Apart from some modestly amusing princess shtick and a pleasantly slapsticky opening, there's no real reason for anyone over the age of 11 to see this one.
This is a very skillfully made corporate product, but I wonder who, exactly, will be fully satisfied.
A shame it lacks the smart sassiness of its predecessors. Time to call time, we think.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/6
Computer-generated animated movies with wall-to-wall jokes can be excruciating, but these jokes are the funniest money can buy.
This is the most visually impressive Shrek yet. It's also the least inspired.
The plot material isn't as strong as in the first two movies -- if anything, it feels a bit desperate -- but the anti-Disney joke blunderbuss remains in good working order.
Kids craving a safe summer-film sugar rush won't care much, though adult fans are bound to wish upon a star for something besides another animated feature running on autopilot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/6
Feels sluggish and tired; its relentless, not-so-great gags hit with the soft thud of stone-hard bread crumbs.
The film's humor is all in the business and nowhere in the lame story's two subplots, neither of which is strong enough to sustain a real movie.
A parallel world of wonders, zestfully conceived and radiantly rendered, in which the great-hearted ogre tries his likeable best to avoid the parallel threats of kingship and parenthood.
The world of the fanciful fable looks particularly vibrant this time with its signature blend of realism and fantasy. It is a pleasure to watch these fairy tale folk be themselves -- yet again.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
What the characters and satirical situations may lack this time out in a certain fresh vitality, they more than compensate for with a warm, laid-back familiarity ... and the occasional, out-of-left-fjord surprise.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The series is showing signs of aging, from the predictably jokey store signs (Versarchery, Abercrombie and Witch) to the classic-rock instrumentals playing under the fight scenes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Shrek may have been first, but revisionist fairy tales have become more common than the real thing, and this sequel should have done more to differentiate itself.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The movie's tidy running time is crammed with so many yuks that I'd have to watch two or three times to catch them all. And I wouldn't mind.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Don't arrive late, children, because what little energy exists gets expended early on.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
An amusing -- if not consistently brilliant -- edition of a series that has yet to show signs that it needs to call it quits.
| Original Score: B
One measure of comedy's pleasure might be how often you recount the best bits after leaving the theater. Shrek is loaded with the sort of set pieces, both hysterical and satisfyingly amusing, you'll irk friends with.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Disposable, clever and never willing to pass up a chance to show how hip it can be, Shrek the Third should make kids titter, adolescents snicker and cash registers ring.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
The imaginative leaps in the animation are dragged down by the deadweight storytelling.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Shrek the Third seems at once more energetic and more relaxed [than its predecessors], less desperate to prove its cleverness and therefore to some extent smarter.
| Original Score: 4/5
Where the first two films laced their stories with references to and appearances by familiar fairy tale characters, Shrek the Third is almost totally dependent upon them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
[Monty] Python-ish nuttiness is thinly scattered, but it makes the movie worth seeing -- once.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
A deflated, weakly plotted effort that only intermittently recaptures the jubilant humor of the earlier films.
| Original Score: 2/4
Shrek the Third has its moments. But does a kids' movie really need, among other similar touches, a Hooters joke? I, for one, wouldn't want to have to explain it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
The formula still works. Maybe not as well, but it works.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Shrek the Third manages to [add new characters and plots] without losing sight of the series' primary appeal, the snappy subversiveness with which it upends fairy tales, nursery rhymes and legends.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Those of us charmed by the original Shrek and its ability to mix fairy-tale sweetness with some hilariously grown-up cleverness will leave disappointed. Much of this feels like a retread, a cash cow without enough ideas to justify its existence.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
There's never the sense of a movie begging for laughs by throwing in anachronisms. The jokes are organic to the movie, to its sly and slightly caustic worldview, and they don't stop coming, from start to finish.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
There's no disguising the fact that Shrek the Third has come down with a bad case of sequelitis. You know the symptoms: Lots of razzle-dazzle to distract from the hole at the center of the story. You know, the place where fresh ideas should be.
| Original Score: 2/4
As far as the adventures of Shrek go, it grieves me to report that the third time is charmless.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
If you're into the last two installments, you'll find the same laughs here. Nothing more, nothing less.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
At least this sequel finally establishes how many licks it takes to finish off a popular fairy tale spoof. Three.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
It makes the mistake of thinking slapstick action is funny for its own sake. True, characters zooming and bouncing around are easy to write because no creative invention is required to set them in motion. But so what?
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The charm has evaporated. Cinephiles will enjoy some of the in-jokes (watching an awful play, one character cracks, "This is worse than Love Letters"). But then, if you're a cinephile, why would you bother with this?
I doubt even rabid fans of the first two will consider Shrek the Third a worthy addition to the franchise.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Director Chris Miller and the credited writers are determined that if these films are to be a collection of riffs and gags, with a sweet afterthought for a finale, then they ought to be very good. And, largely, these are.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Geez, it's not very good. Talky, overpopulated, even the ha-ha so-called adult jokes have grown stale and predictable.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Four words say all that needs to be said about Shrek the Third: more of the same. The problem is, what seems fresh and pleasing the first time through starts to feel a little stale by the time we've gone through it three times.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Shrek the Third sticks to the swamp it knows best, in a mild climate of palatable jokes about fatherhood, high school, girl power, and a drug-education program for teens that advises ''Just Say Nay.''
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Blinded by avarice and all out of ideas, once again, Hollywood can't tell when enough is way more than enough.
While still mirthful and eccentric enough to amuse his hordes of admirers, the irascible green ogre begins to show signs of encroaching middle age in Shrek the Third.
Much of the bite and a good deal of the wit of the first two films are missing here.
