Hiya fellas, Just Dave emailed this review a couple of days ago and it is time to show you what her thought of the film. Enjoy.

Man, Shrek The Third sucked so bad. It was just horrible.

Even the most average of efforts for a fourth film would have been an improvement on that film. Thankfully Dreamworks Animation has returned the franchise to its roots with Shrek Forever After and given us a story and tone that are more than satisfactory.

They’ve given us something thats downright entertaining and hilarious as well as sweet and touching. They’ve figured out what made Shrek so popular in the first place and returned to it: literally retelling the first film...And for a supposed ‘final chapter’ this a wonderful bookend to the series.

The Shrek films have become an institution: The first Shrek was a wonderful film; flawed, but great non-the-less. The second: Shrek 2 was slightly worse; magnifying the faults of the first film. The travesty that was Shrek The Third eliminated any of the good factors of Shrek and only consisted of the bad: The stunt casting, the pop radio songs, the endless on-the-nose pop culture references...by then all of the cast were showing signs of being tired with the franchise: sleepwalking through their roles; giving us dreary readings that made for boring cinema.

With the Shrek series it’s obviously fairy-tale stuff, it’s predictable, but with each of these films we know the ending from the get go, so the journey has to be worth it, and trust me: Shrek Forever After, whilst still having some of the franchises flaws (in much lesser degrees) is actually fantastic.

Shrek Forever After begins at Shrek and Fiona’s children’s very first birthday party, everyone is invited, but Shrek isn’t happy; he has become a celebrity, old and tired, he can’t go anywhere without being harassed by either fans, or tourists: It’s great commentary on the state of the series as a whole.

The series has gotten stale and nobody wants to see Shrek the ogre anymore, his jokes are tired, his roar has lost it’s luster. He’s had children, he’s now a family man...Shrek becomes irritated with the notion of him never being able to live a peaceful life again and leaves the party in frustration after making a massive scene.

After some ruckus Shrek bumps into the mischievous Rumplestiltskin; a traveling shyster, who tricks unwitting folk into signing away their lives via magical contracts. In a bid to take control of Far Far Away; he convinces the unstable Shrek to sign away. The contract allows Shrek to live a entire day as if he never rescued Fiona, as if he lived alone in his swamp and was feared by humanity...but of course, there is a catch, and it doesn’t seem that big of one:
For his one day Shrek must choose a day of his own life to trade. So Shrek signs away “a day from my childhood, one that I don’t even remember”.

The cheeky bastard Rumplestiltskin takes the very day Shrek was born, therefore when the 24 hour contract ceases, Shrek will never have existed. So Shrek wakes up in this alternate apocalyptic version of Far Far Away and he knows no-one and no-one knows him. With the help of Donkey; Shrek discovers the exit clause of the contract: find your true love’s kiss before the day is out and all will be reversed. Theres only two problems:
1) Fiona was never rescued and became something unexpected and
2) With Shrek never born Rumplestiltskin rose to rule Far Far Away and he want’s Shrek dead: cue bounty hunters and Witches and whatnot.

I went into Shrek Forever After agitated. It was in the dreaded hit and miss 3D; and the third movie was horrible, it screamed cash in... but with in a few minutes I was won over by the creative storyline and the hilarity of it all.

The story-line allows for a reversal of the first film: Shrek has to find his friends who do not want to know him, where it was the opposite first time around. It’s a bizarro world Shrek, Puss in Boots is fat, Fiona is a...is a...well you will have to see.
 We see everybody from the Gingerbread man and Pinnochio, Dragon...even favorites from the first one reappear, but they are all different, and experiencing these differences makes the film a lot of fun.

It reminds you a hell of a lot of the first film and through it all you realize what has been missing from the sequels, and ultimately thats what this movie is all about, you don’t realize what you have till it’s gone: and this is very worthy for a supposed ‘final chapter’.

Dohrn is just incredible. Rumplestiltskin is a creation indeed; a completely exaggerated character with inhuman features, incredibly over the top, rip roaring through the picture, he’s a bastard, cruel and hilarious. Think of your typical shyster lawyer and mix him with Sid from Toy Story and you are half way there! Screw the Puss in Boots spin off, I want to see a spin off of Rumplestiltskin.

The voice cast are great, Diaz and Myers fall flat, sometimes they seem like they are reading, but this doesn’t happen all the time and the important true love stuff remains sweet and touching because of them. Murphy and Banderas remind you how great they can be, and there are some surprise voice actors in the mix and to ruin them would wreck your fun. IMDB them if you really want. One of the cameos was so great that it had me laughing pretty hard. It was a ‘Chimmy Changas’ reference. As with the new A-Team flick, Mad Men fans will get a kick at one point or another...

With all the great gags and character acting Shrek Forever After is hilarious. Even though many of the jokes fall flat, the ones that work are great, and they work way more often then they fail. This time round the new fairytale characters work; the Pied Piper is hilarious, and the Witches are great. There are of course other great new characters, but ruining them isn’t fun.

Dreamworks must have known they had something with this film. They must have actively set about removing the crap elements of Shrek The Third;  you see, all of the human characters are virtually absent. It’s all creatures and whatever. In the other Shrek films, particularly the third; the human characters were animated so poorly and creepily that they made Tom Hanks in The Polar Express look friendly.

It’s funny, Dreamworks Animation went through a very rough patch with Shark-tale, Madagascar, Over the Hedge and amongst others Shrek The Third, but as of late they haven’t struck out in ages. Barring the Madagascar sequel (which I missed) they have been universally great: Bee Movie, Kung Fu Panda, Monsters Vs Aliens, and the incredible almost Pixar smashing: How To Train Your Dragon.  Dreamworks has pulled it’s head out and may soon being giving Pixar a run for the money.

But only if they could, you know...get human’s to look right.

The realistic Human characters in Dreamworks films have not yet worked (just briefly: in other Dreamworks flicks the humans have been exaggerated and cartoonish, we’re talking the anatomically correct kind of human)...and the good thing about Shrek Forever After is that the film virtually avoids them as much as it can. (Hence the genius of Rumplestiltskin).

The fact that the realistic nightmares are barely on screen does hurt only when you sporadically see them: you instantly realizing how crap they look makes for jarring viewing.

All of this helps you realize the beauty of the animation. This film is a gorgeous one, in a dark gothic way. Its post apocalyptic imagery and magic elements are wonderfully rendered.

The only issue with the look is not the fault of the art design or animation. It’s the bloody 3D that I saw the feature in. The majority of the film takes place in dark areas and/or nighttime. Generally this wouldn’t have been a problem, but the 3D glasses block out 45% of the light of the film, and it didn’t seem like Dreamworks graded for the difference.

I would see this film in 2D if you could. I imagine it would look great, and besides the 3D adds absolutely nothing to the film at all. Nothing. Not even a gimmick.

I might be laboring the praise on the new Shrek a bit too much, but there really isn’t much to complain about.

It’s predictable family fun that is actually fun. It never takes itself too seriously and it moves quickly, the action scenes are thrilling as well. The major negative aspect of Forever After is the typical Shrek stylistic choices, in particular the damn soundtrack choices. Go back and watch the first Shrek film, its soundtrack choices are incredibly specific to the time period the film was made in: the movies feel so dated because of it.

 I swear to god I thought I heard lady gaga (during a woefully misguided rave scene - the only scene in this film I had severe issues with). All this does is prematurely date the film to sell a record... and you can’t help but think that  if the whole thing was scored it would have been much better and more in tone with the fairytale aspect.

There are also pop culture references that fall flat, but thankfully there is no name dropping and/or excessive parody here.

I liked Shrek Forever After and even though they say it’s the last one, I really hope they do another one. In the end the best thing about this movie is that you could pretty much completely forget about Shrek The Third and you would not miss a single thing. At all.

It looks like Just Dave just gave Shrek Forever after the two big thumbs up. So what more do you need to hear. Get out there and watch this. Damn I hope he’s right because I loved the first two Shreks and want to come back to that love.