The magic is largely gone in this watchable but charmless sequel, writes Donald Clarke
ONCE upon a time, in a land far, far away, brave Prince Jeffrey of Katzenberg donned his chain- mail, pulled on his boots and set forth to slay - or, at the very least, inconvenience - the great dragon Disney.
Prince Jeffrey, once an intimate of the beast, used as his agent an inexplicably Caledonian ogre by the name of Shrek. Employing a surfeit of poundingly referential irony that excited parents every bit as much as it did their children, the film scared the dragon back to his cave and gathered treasure in the form of the first ever Academy Award for best animated feature. If only we could all have been left to live happily ever after.
Shrek the Third is, to be fair, far from terrible. Indeed, anybody unlucky enough to have recently sat through another, damper Part 3 (the one featuring pirates and Rolling Stones) may, understandably, find themselves skipping delightedly out of this briefer, less pompous entertainment. There are more than enough toilet jokes to satisfy boys of all ages, and the heroes' sidekicks continue to find inventive ways to squabble. The animation, though far from spectacular, is satisfactory throughout.
There is, however, no getting away from the fact that the franchise - slightly stinky last time round, though still edible - has now curdled beyond the rescuing of the most talented digital chef. The film-makers have become so obsessed with commenting upon popular culture at large that they have neglected basic domestic issues such as story, character and emotion. There is an awful lot going on in Shrek the Third, but not much you are likely to care about.
The movie begins with the amusing death of Shrek's father-in-law (a frog king with John Cleese's voice) and the disturbing announcement that the lazy ogre is next in line to the throne. Showing scant respect for traditions of monarchical succession, the plot allows Shrek the option of tracking down a teenager named Arthur and persuading him to take over the governance of Far Far Away.
At about this point, Princess Fiona, once a fair damsel, now Shrek's warty wife, announces that she is pregnant. Eager to relieve himself of at least one terrifying responsibility, our hero boards a ship with Donkey and Puss in Boots and sets out to locate this Artie fellow.
Meanwhile, the exiled Prince Charming (voiced with oleaginous pomposity by Rupert Everett) gathers together a band of fairytale villains and begins plotting to fill the vacuum left by the amphibian monarch. Not even the knowledge that Justin Timberlake has lent his breathy timbre to Artie can dent the rebels' righteous ardour.
To an even greater extent than before, the plot is just a framework on which to hang a series of cracks about contemporary media absurdities. Even if the novelty of such an approach had not worn thin, the pounding obviousness of the targets would still fatally weaken the satirical punch.
Can anything properly amusing be said about Hooters, the chain of notoriously breasty bars, in a family film? On this evidence, one would have to say, no. Is there still mileage to be had from making jokes about the tribal nature of American high schools? Nothing in the sequences depicting Artie's engagement with nerds and jocks gives us much hope.
Mind you, when you consider how psychologically withered the central character has become, it is hardly surprising that the film-makers have devoted so much attention to scrutinising the outside world. Shrek was originally a sour, ill-tempered cynic with an enthusiasm for solitude and an addiction to thoughtless putdowns. Now, happily married and accommodating himself to fatherhood, he has become rather too polite to generate much mischievous humour.
One is reminded of the way the producers of TV's M*A*S*H gradually edged Margaret Houlihan towards pointless decency, or of the moderating change that slowly came over Mrs Mangle, once a wretched gossip, in the early years of Neighbours. Nice is rarely as funny as nasty.
