I took my Girlfriend to see it at a mattinee yesterday not in 3-D because the theater isnt' equipped with that though they just got bought out by AMC so 3-D might be here sometime this year but I never really planned on seeing Shrek in 3-D anyway
I thought it was suprisingly good.....there were not nearly as many pop culture jokes and it focused more on the story than gag after gag after fart....and that's what makes me like it....I mean I noted a few references to other films but.....i'll post them in white for possible spoiler
The Witches were afraid of Water....and when Rumpel throws water on a witch its very much a reference to Wizard of Oz
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Also I noticed in the credits....I like how the montage was done of the entire shrek 1 through 4 was done...and I also cracked up when I saw that Kathy Griffin vocied a few of the Witches..... Talk about your type casting
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Really, after the huge disaster that was Shrek 3 its like the writers learned their lesson. I was afraid the whole "It's a wonderful life" cliche would ruin it, but it was done surprisingly well (like the exit clause and the whole time travel aspect).
The character development was really nice, especially with Shrek and Fiona. I would say Forever After is the most romantic of the Shrek films, with a lot of passion and drama between them. It makes for a very nice change of pace.
I admit I thought most of the ogre characters were throwaway and served mostly to be background characters. Donkey and Puss were surprisingly great, not as grating as in the third movie.
I still like the first two movies the best, but Shrek Four proved that Dreamworks can release a good movie when they focus on the story.
I thought the characters and story were wonderful. I liked Rumpel from the first time I saw a trailer and the liking grew while I watched the film. He's a lot of fun and he's got the coolest goose ever that looks vampire-bitten.
I feel sorry for composer Harry Gregson-Williams. His talent seemed wasted in this film. The large amount of pop songs overshadow his score. I should say the same for the composers for the other movies. All the pop songs were my biggest problem while watching this. Most of the background music being score would have been a huge favor to this movie.
Sky Syndrome wrote:I feel sorry for composer Harry Gregson-Williams. His talent seemed wasted in this film. The large amount of pop songs overshadow his score. I should say the same for the composers for the other movies. All the pop songs were my biggest problem while watching this. Most of the background music being score would have been a huge favor to this movie.
I agree completely. I understand that using pop songs are a staple of the franchise, Williams can produce some very poignant and moving scores. I fell in love with the first movie's orchestral score. Forever After also has some great music, like when Shrek and Fiona are arguing outside the birthday party, and when Shrek is about to disappear and Fiona is holding him in her arms. The Shrek theme is used wonderfully in both of these scenes and add a lot of soul to the movie.
I should add that I don't mind the characters singing (or Pied Piper's case playing with a instrument) pop songs. My above complaint was for pop songs sung in the background. I wouldn't have minded the background pop songs so much if they were instrumental like Piper's 'Shake Your Groove Thing'.
Also, I bought the soundtrack CD today. Harry Gregson-Williams enthusiasts are going to be very disappointed. Just pop songs and one instrumental (I adore this instrumental, it plays during Rumpel's booming party. Some guy called Mike Simpson made it). In between the songs are 12-30 second skits of Rumpel being a radio DJ, which I thought was clever. But...what the heck about Harry Gregson-Williams' score?! They even put 'Original Score by Harry Gregson-Williams' on the back of the case and inside the booklet. What's the point of that?! None of it is on the disc! Plus people at stores whom read the back of the case will think the green track titles are obviously score tracks because the white track titles have song artists' names after them while the green titles don't have anything after them.
If I am not mistaken, Shrek soundtracks are released in pairs: one containing the pop songs, the other the musical score. I owned both for the first Shrek movie.
What you need to check is if they released the musical score soundtrack as well.
I had wondered if there was a seperate CD for the score. I checked Amazon.com and there were two soundtrack CDs (one without Rumpel on the front and the other with him) for the film but no tracks listed. I have the CD without Rumpel on the front so I went on a search for the track list for the latter CD. I went to Ebay because some people list the tracks on CDs they sell. I had to check six auctions with a picture of the CD with Rumpel on the front before I found one with the score track list. Oddly, a couple of those auctions had a track list for the pop song CD instead.
I agree with most of the comments here. The movie really took me by surprise, as I was expecting it to be as atrocious as most post-second entries in franchises are. It appears the Shrek creators have learned their lesson after the wretchedness of "Third". "Forever After" seems much smaller in scale, and as a result, it feels much more intimate and emotional than any of the previous Shrek movies. And other than the occasional song (and the ever-present fart jokes), I didn't notice as many pop-culture references as in the previous three films. It is also very engaging, imaginative and just plain fun. It really is a great and satisfying bookend to the series.
singerguy04 wrote:I did find it very disappointing that there was such a lack of the secondary characters. I missed how important gingy, pinoke, the big bad wolf, and the rest of that gang once was.
I actually really liked that. Those characters have gotten very distracting to the point of grating my nerves in the third movie (and part of the second one, too). By having the movie focus on the core four characters, it was sort of a return to what made the first two movies great.
I'm just glad the series ended on a better note than "Shrek the Third". Now let's just hope DreamWorks keeps their promise of this being the final chapter.
Mooky wrote:I agree with most of the comments here. The movie really took me by surprise, as I was expecting it to be as atrocious as most post-second entries in franchises are. It appears the Shrek creators have learned their lesson after the wretchedness of "Third". "Forever After" seems much smaller in scale, and as a result, it feels much more intimate and emotional than any of the previous Shrek movies. And other than the occasional song (and the ever-present fart jokes), I didn't notice as many pop-culture references as in the previous three films. It is also very engaging, imaginative and just plain fun. It really is a great and satisfying bookend to the series.
singerguy04 wrote:I did find it very disappointing that there was such a lack of the secondary characters. I missed how important gingy, pinoke, the big bad wolf, and the rest of that gang once was.
I actually really liked that. Those characters have gotten very distracting to the point of grating my nerves in the third movie (and part of the second one, too). By having the movie focus on the core four characters, it was sort of a return to what made the first two movies great.
I'm just glad the series ended on a better note than "Shrek the Third". Now let's just hope DreamWorks keeps their promise of this being the final chapter.
Yeah they will.....however.....there's quite a many loophole in that "promise" since this is being planned right now...a spin off
The Puss and Boots movie has been in the works since Shrek 2! They originally wanted Madonna to voice a character, but declined. After Shrek 3 was a huge hit, DreamWorks announced that they would be producing the Christmas special, the Broadway show, movies four, five and six and the Puss and Boots movie. It seems that the one movie that was going according to plan was Puss and Boots, and it was too advanced in production for it to be canceled.
Maybe DreamWorks realized that there was very little magic left in the franchise and thus cut down on the Shrek movies.
The Broadway show apparently flopped, I don't know how the Christmas special fared on TV and DVD, and the fourth movie had a very weak opening.
Maybe this is why they are ending the series now: with Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar and Dragons proving very profitable maybe now they will focus on those franchises instead of milking the Shrek cow further.
pap64 wrote:The Puss and Boots movie has been in the works since Shrek 2! They originally wanted Madonna to voice a character, but declined. After Shrek 3 was a huge hit, DreamWorks announced that they would be producing the Christmas special, the Broadway show, movies four, five and six and the Puss and Boots movie. It seems that the one movie that was going according to plan was Puss and Boots, and it was too advanced in production for it to be canceled.
Maybe DreamWorks realized that there was very little magic left in the franchise and thus cut down on the Shrek movies.
The Broadway show apparently flopped, I don't know how the Christmas special fared on TV and DVD, and the fourth movie had a very weak opening.
Maybe this is why they are ending the series now: with Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar and Dragons proving very profitable maybe now they will focus on those franchises instead of milking the Shrek cow further.
Oh I didn't know it has been in the works since Shrek 2. Thanks for the info..
Also I had heard they were doing 5 when Shrek 4 was titles Shrek Goes Fourth...but your probably right about just ending it...although I wonder if we'll see any characters from Shrek in the Puss in Boots movie or any ogres...guess we'll just have to wait and see
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I wish Pinoke had a nicer voice to listen to. The one he has makes me cringe. I'm surprised Rumpel didn't have much of a grudge towards Pinoke after Pinoke kicked him out of the book store. I think Pinoke kicked him out with his foot and Rumpel limped for several days. Rumpel giving Pinoke a contract to sign to become a real boy and Rumpel spilling the ink bottle on the signature line before Pinoke finished was mild for Rumpel. Ordering for Pinoke to be burned in the kitchen fireplace seems more him.
I actually really liked this movie. I thought it was a good end to the Shrek series. The visual design is definitely the finest of the series. And Rumpelstiltskin could possibly be my favorite Shrek villain next to Fairy Godmother. :)
Good thing that this thread was revived once more. Last night I was thinking Shrek 3 and Shrek 4 and realized that one of the reasons the new movie is so good is because it doesn't play around with the emotions of the characters. It takes itself seriously in that regard, thus giving us a reason to care for them.
In the third they tried to add some emotional depth to it, but the writers didn't know if they wanted to be comedic about it or be serious. An example of this is the king's death in the third movie. This scene was handled very, very poorly. They realized that this would be a major emotional point for the characters since Fiona and the Queen would be losing a man they truly loved and Shrek had to deal with the responsibilities of the kingdom. The problem is that they kept adding it funny jokes that actually take away from the drama of the scene. We have the king dying, then coming back to life, and then the line "he finally croaked". The funeral scene is even worse. We have this very sad scene with all of the characters clearly affected by it. But the writer couldn't help themselves and wrote it so that the king would be buried inside a Nike shoe box while a quartet of frogs humorously sing him off. How do they expect me to take this seriously when they keep throwing me all of these jokes? I mean, was one of the writers cynical of the whole aspect of death and thus want to make a joke out of it?
Shrek 4 avoids this by realizing that there's a moment for funny jokes and a moment for seriousness. Never when Shrek and Fiona were arguing about their relationship did they throw in a lame joke or something that ruins the mood of the scene. The writers took the universe seriously and gave us a great story in the process. It's why Shrek 4 is so much effective as a movie than the third one, because this was a labor of love despite its unnecessary sequel nature.
pap64- I totally agree with the spoilers text you just posted, and it was probably what bothered me the most about part three. The king dies and the writers treat it all as one really big joke. WTF?
enigmawing wrote:pap64- I totally agree with the spoilers text you just posted, and it was probably what bothered me the most about part three. The king dies and the writers treat it all as one really big joke. WTF?
I have to agree with pap64 as well....the way they handled the scene in the Third Film was utterly sick....Death is not a joke...I have experienced many a friends and family members die and its really a turn off in Shrek the Third. In that scene they used more South Park humor in a movie that really...it didn't belong in it at all to the target audience of the whole Shrek Franchise....even Merlin eating rocks and making his teeth bleed....I think they honestly used South Park type of humor for what was being told as a family film.....and I think that's why...I didn't go to see Shrek the Third to hear a lot of crude crude humor as much as they did in Shrek 3...I kinda in a way like to pretend it never happened but it does serve as Shrek and the Kids...now Shrek 3 does have moments like when Donkey started to sing Cats in the cradle cat stevens...that might be one of my favorite parts in Shrek the third....
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There is one episode of South Park I personally can't stand, and that is the episode in which Kenny really does die. The scene is handled so seriously to the point where its hard to watch, then they make a big joke out of it. And I didn't enjoy it for the same reason as disneyboy. I've had relatives die beside me, and when I realized that the last time I would be seeing my grandmother alive was at her deathbed, it destroyed me at the hospital. So imagine my shock and surprise when South Park re-created the scene PERFECTLY, then proceeded to make fun of it...
I told my best friend about it, and all he could say "Dude come on it's a joke! They aren't being serious!". I explained to him that the scene had very serious implications about witnessing someone's death, only to make fun of it, which I think its uncool.
But still, South Park can be forgiven because, hey, its South Park. Its an adult show made to shock and amuse adults. But Shrek the Third is a FAMILY film! Did they fear that the death would be too much for families to bear and thus decided to lighten it up a but or did they believe that since Shrek has edgy humor the scene needed to have shock humor?
Death sucks. It doesn't matter who dies (a cat, kitten, dog, friend, mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, ANYONE) its going to have a deep effect on people. It doesn't even matter if the person that gets affected by it is an emotional stone or overly melodramatic, death WILL affect the person and change how his or her life is handled. So once more, WHY did they decide to make a big joke about it in Shrek the Third? What did they accomplish from it?
Talk about your type casting 
