Cinephillyist Reviews... Shrek the Third

I'm just going to come out and say it: I loved Shrek the Third. I didn't want to. I was worried that it'd be disappointing. The original was brilliant, and the second was a very strong sequel, but the Tomatoes had me convinced that the third would be less-than-stellar. The third installment of the popular series didn't equal the first two, but it had more of what made the first two so enjoyable: adult humor.

Yeah, yeah. Cartoons shouldn't be adult. Tell that to Matt Groening and Seth MacFarlane. Recent viewings of many of the cherished cartoons of my youth have led me to realize that the best cartoons are the ones that stick not-quite-appropriate-for-children humor into a format that's geared toward children. The kids in the audience howled at the moments that were obviously geared toward them, and the adults in the audience howled at moments that the children obviously didn't get. A good time was had by all. (By the way, there's a Led Zeppelin song inserted in the last twenty minutes or so of the movie that resulted in my almost falling out of my chair. It was just too perfect.)

Shrek the Third reunites much of the cast of the first two films: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas, Rupert Everett, and Julie Andrews, for instance, and adds to the mix the vocal talents of Amy Sedaris, Amy Poehler, Eric Idle, and Cheri Oteri. That's a lot of funny in one cast, and the results pay off. Sometimes, better than others. But they do. And the movie is, in the end, thoroughly enjoyable, if not as much as the previous installments.