The end?: Mike Mitchell, Shrek Forever After

Shrek Forever After (2010)
Directed by Mike Mitchell

In the fourth and, apparently, the last installment of the Shrek series, the main character feels he isn’t the same ogre as always; eventually, he misses the days when he was alone and free. It’s ironic how the audiences felt with each sequel the same way about him and his appearance in the first installment, back in 2001. Where is the Shrek we use to know? they could have wondered in 2004 and 2007. It isn’t difficult to guess why: the greatest part about Shrek was the main, provocative concept, of the ogre that rescues the princess, while the regular hero, Prince Charming, is nothing more than a poseur and a fraud, and that concept was great used once, but it became obsolete in the sequels. The scriptwriters of Shrek 2 had the bright idea of using a whole bunch of new characters, including the marvelous Puss in Boots and the princess’ parents, but the third and the fourth episode were just not that rich in new characters. As a result, each new sequel made you regret the previous episode. Of course, there may be those who could argue that it’s enough for an animation film to be entertaining, and nothing more, and in that aspect you can’t really complain about the subsequent film. Nevertheless, one film to another, the scripts begun to sound alike, mostly when it comes to gags: you were having the same pop parodies, the same irony towards blockbusters and, sometimes, the same jokes: Pinocchio’s nose, for eg., is shown each time growing up, as Pinocchio has just told a lie. As time went by, the Shrek series started to look more like a sitcom about a strange family than like a deconstructed fairytale. It was expected from the sequels to be more didactic, but what they also become was predictable; hence, the new installment is about marital crisis.

The plot of the film concerns Shrek, who happens to reach some kind of alternative dimension, where he never met his usual friends and never saved Fiona from the dragon – a clear pastiche (if not a direct copy) of Capra’s It's a Wonderful Life. The cause of the whole mess is a certain character, which you might have missed in the third installment of the series, Shrek the Third, as he was looking completely different, a character brought from the Brothers Grimm’s fairytales, named Rumpelstiltskin. His magic powers allow him to transform the whole kingdom into a permanent witches’ Sabbath. It’s a pity that the film exploits in just two or three scenes the whole situation; in the most elaborate of them, Shrek is followed by witches on a broomstick along the corridors of the royal palace owned now by Rumpelstiltskin. As a matter of fact, Rumpelstiltskin is much more feared than present onscreen, and the script doesn’t clarify why he is supposed to be so feared. As in the first installment of the series, it’s all again about fairytale characters, uniting against the villain. But Shrek Forever After is more like an equation whose result you already know: in spite of the fact that they never saw each other, Shrek’s friends from the other life are soon his friends, while he meets Fiona and falls in love with her again, and so on. As almost impossible situations are actually being solved almost effortless, it’s easy not to take seriously the farce that the film uses for a plot, without making the film less thrilling.

You can’t be sure if this would really be the last time to see Shrek in cinemas (DreamWorks actually announced some kind of prequel, with Puss in Boots’ adventures), but Shrek Forever After is made to make you believe it: the closing credits are comprised of a cover of “I’m a Believer”, played by Weezer, song that reminds of the closing credits of the first part of the series; meanwhile, a concise story of Shrek is going along with the credits onscreen; the script itself is an homage to the “true love’s first kiss” part from the 2001 film. It had, somehow, to be found a structure that automatically sends the viewer to the experience of the first Shrek and the message it contained. If DreamWorks keep their promise, the four Shrek films will automatically form a tetralogy, representing the symbolic equivalent of those “family movies”, so popular after the dawn of talkies, films like the already mentioned It's a Wonderful Life, which is not such a bad thing per se, if it weren’t for the serious involution in irony and satire, compared only to the first Shrek. Already, there are so many that hope that Shrek Forever After is really the last step of that involution.