Third ‘Shrek’ an offensive, scatological nightmare

Y’know, they were a little rough around the edges, what with their lame fart jokes and their painfully outdated musical numbers, but the “Shrek” films had a certain easygoing charm about them, a rounded-off, agreeable feeling that somehow left you wanting more. When “Shrek 2” came out, I foolishly requested to visit these characters “a third time;” a dangerous prospect considering that enormous box-office returns coupled with an immediate desire for more too often leads to a dulling of the artistic senses in terms of both artist and audience.

That’s what happened with “Spider-Man 3,” of course, insofar as you can put any old crap up on the screen and people will come in droves to lap up the safe and familiar. With “Shrek the Third,” the trilogy of horrendous blockbuster trilogies is nearly complete; any bets on “Pirates of the Carribbean” tomorrow?

This time, Shrek (Mike Myers, collecting a paycheck) is confronted with a double whammy of responsibility for which he’s not quite ready: King Harold (John Cleese) kicks the bucket, leaving Shrek as the heir apparent to the kingdom of Far, Far Away; meanwhile, his wife Fiona (Cameron Diaz) is pregnant with his ogre child. So, accompanied by his screaming jackass Donkey (screaming jackass Eddie Murphy) and his feline Don Juan Puss-in-Boots (Antonio Banderas), Shrek goes on a quest to pawn off his responsibilities on someone else, more specifically the only other living heir to the throne, Arthur Pendragon (Justin Timberlake), a squeaky little loser who’s the butt of many a joke and prank at his medieval-themed high school. Yep, everything is still medievally-themed in the “Shrek” universe in that lazy way that merely applies modern-day concepts to a “Flintstones” and “Jetsons” school of comedy—though you’ll probably just start blocking the puns from your mind once you’ve seen a shoebox emblazoned with the phrase “Ye Olde Foote Locker.” With that in mind, you soon come to realize that you don’t really watch “Shrek the Third”; you search it, looking in vain for a sparkle of wit that isn’t thoroughly destroyed by a subsequent descent into scatology or stupidity.

A perfect example would be Shrek’s confrontation with a menacing-looking wicker baby carriage, a potential reference to Larry Cohen’s killer baby classic “It’s Alive,” is rudely curtailed by that lovely stream of puke that keeps showing up in the TV advertisements. (Poop, fart, puke—”Shrek the Third”’s trailers pretty much give everything away.) Or, say, the little touches of madness that certain characters exhibit at hilariously inappropriate moments: when his life is threatened, the Gingerbread Man’s life flashes before his eyes as he quietly sings “Good Ship Lollipop” to himself. There’s real potential to expand these scenes into something uproariously subversive, based on the inherent creepiness of the fairytale characters—the Grimm Brothers’ original stories are nothing if not the disturbing tales of crazies and sociopaths. But that potential is dropped like a hot potato to make room for action scenes for the under-five set—not really dynamic so much as crowded, populated as they are by the myriad public domain characters that didn’t make it into the first two films, thanks to the machinations of dinner theater reject/villain du jour Prince Charming (Rupert Everett).

But then, see, comes the really dangerous thinking: Fiona teams up with a few famous storybook princesses (played, incidentally, by a “Saturday Night Live” female cast revue), content to wait for their heroes to rescue them before a literal bra-burning sends them on a violent crusade to save the day themselves. But since all of the women in this film are portrayed as vain, shallow, lazy and traitorous, does its parodic view of pseudo-feminism constitute as misogyny? No matter, because it’s all just part of an intricate pattern of hatred: “Shrek the Third” condemns high school cruelty but condones grown-up cruelty, wrapping everything up into something sugary and easy to digest in the form of an “I’m OK—You’re OK” speech about the virtues of self-esteem to convince the villains of the picture to lay down their arms. And it doesn’t take “Shrek the Third” more than a few seconds for its unique brand of hypocrisy to kick in and turn it into something detestable: Prince Charming, himself a pouting, self-loathing, slightly androgynous mess, refuses to play along with it all and stays the villainous route; so in a fit of logic and a desire to wrap things up quickly and cleanly, our heroes kill him with a pathetic, non-Daffy Duck “Mommy?” serving as his final words. Eradicate anyone who doesn’t go along with the pop psychology program, in other words, then wish away the bad thoughts with a song and a dance. Dismiss that kind of mentality as impertinent kiddie fluff at your own—and your kids’—risk.