"Shrek" 4: The Midlife Crisis

The "Shrek" films, along with the "Ice Age" films, have a penchant for contemporary humor aimed not-so-slyly at the grow-up members of the audience. Moreover, the central characters are all adults, facing problems that wouldn't be out of place in a Judd Apatow comedy. Shrek, the grumbly green ogre we first met back in his bachelor days, has had to contend with in-laws, fatherhood, and the challenges of becoming a more domestic monster over the last two sequels. The latest, and purportedly the last "Shrek" film, "Shrek Forever After" is no different.

This time the culprit is middle-age malaise, as we find Shrek (voiced as ever by Mike Myers) happily settled down with his loving Fiona (Cameron Diaz) and their triplets in the swamp. But besieged by the demands of family and friends, including Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas), he soon becomes weary of the repetitive day-to-day grind. Shrek starts feeling resentful of his loved ones, and pines for the good old days when the sight of his big green mug would elicit shrieks of terror from the public instead of smothering adoration. After an ugly blow-up, he attracts the attention of the villain of the piece, Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn), ready with a Mephistophelean deal: he'll give Shrek one day as his old ogre self for a seemingly insignificant price. Of course, the consequences turn out to be not so benign.

So commences a long walk down memory lane, as Shrek finds himself in an "It's a Wonderful Life" scenario, stuck in a world where he never existed and Rumpelstiltskin has taken over the kingdom with the help of some menacing witches. To set things right, he has to reconnect with his friends and woo Fiona all over again. As a sequel, and a third sequel no less, "Shrek Forever After" adds very little to the existing universe, aside from a decent villain, and a couple of new variations on some very old jokes. It's a completely superfluous piece of work and everyone involved knows it. To the filmmakers' credit, there's relatively little rehashing of past events, and the skimpy premise ultimately yields a nice alternate version of Shrek and Fiona's romance. So many little moments play on our knowledge of the first film, however, I don't think the new one would work half as well if viewers weren't familiar with the original "Shrek."

But even though the new film is such a shameless exercise in extending already overextended material, it's hard to deny the charms of the "Shrek" franchise. While the narrative treads water, often feeling like an epilogue stretched out to unseemly proportions, it's all a perfectly harmless diversion. "Shrek Forever After" is the equivalent of cinematic comfort food, a film so familiar that we're left with no surprises but no disappointments either. The small children that comprise its target audience will be thrilled with it, and parents may not be especially entertained, but they won't be bored either. At a brisk eighty minutes, it's an effortless watch, well-packaged and well-executed. I skipped the third installment of "Shrek," "Shrek the Third," but I didn't feel like I'd missed anything important. Whether this is a positive or a negative for the film, I suspect will depend on the viewer.

"Shrek Forever After" is targeted at parents more than kids, as the film is so derivative, you could stick a DVD of the ten-year-old original "Shrek" in the player, and the kids would hardly know the difference. However the new film does deliver a strong dose of nostalgia to the grown-ups and the adolescents who grew up on the earlier films, as it serves as an acknowledgment that time has passed even for the world's favorite ogre. The themes of settling down and learning to move on to a new phase of life are not going to resonate very strongly with the twelve-and-under set, but they might spark a little wistfulness for the rest of us. "Toy Story 3" will be plumbing the dramatic depths of similar nostalgic territory with its final installment later this week, and considering their recent output, will likely bring audiences to tears in the process. "Shrek Forever After" has no such grand ambitions, content to simply say that they all lived "happily ever after," and leave it at that.

... until the "Puss in Boots" spinoff anyway.