Quick thoughts - Shrek the Third

The Shrek sequels are surprisingly inoffensive. Yes, they lack the freshness of the original, but whereas with the bloated, convoluted Pirates sequels this bothered me to no end, the Shrek movies keep it simple and short, without any more ambition than entertaining, and in that ambition they succeed, despite a falling lpm ratio. The Shrek-based humor is quite repetitive at this point in particular, but there are lovely little visual jokes - the trees using their branches as a parachute, for instance. Also, the celebrity voices are well-cast, I especially liked that after already using John Cleese in the second movie, they now also added fellow Monty Python alum Eric Idle as a somewhat loony Merlin. The subplot about villains taking back their stories could have been more interesting and fleshed out, but it feels petty to complain about a movie that knows to stay simple, short, and light.

Of course I prefer originality, daring, and so on. But for an evening like yesterday, when I was spending the evening with a friend I hadn't spent time with in a while, there could not have been a more appropriate movie.