Shrek Forever After
Shrek Forever After has Mike Myers back as Shrek in this fable that resembles a perfect storm where It’s a Wonderful Life collides with Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the Wizard of Oz. Also retuning are Cameron Diaz as the voice of Princess Fiona and the frenetic Eddie Murphy as the scene stealing Donkey. Back too is Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots - for the most part with a bit of a glandular problem. New is Walt Dohrn as Rumpelstiltskin who is introduced in a quick flashback as a charlatan magician who almost had Fiona’s royal parents King Harold (John Cleese) and his Queen (Julie Andrews) convinced that in exchange for their kingdom he could cure her of her ugly curse when news broke that Shrek had already done the job. Flash forward and the Shreks are a nuclear family of five with one cat in the yard along with a donkey. This blissful life is good for a while but Shrek after all is an Ogre and starts missing the terrorization of townsfolk. An alert Rumpelstiltskin sees a way in this Ogre angst to revisit his earlier deal and tricks Shrek into signing a contract that propels him into an alternate universe where he has one day to make everything right again or perish forever as though he’d never existed. Shrek Forever After features 3D animation that is quite remarkable as a combination of computer generated animation as well as the "live action" performance capture technique used in Polar Express and is a worthwhile finale (if it really is) to a franchise that fizzled badly in its previous third incarnation.