Shrek Forever After

Rating***

‘I am no longer an ogre,I am just a jolly green joke’ : with this line,Shrek sets the tone for the fourth and final instalment of the super-successful ‘Shrek’ franchise.

The film opens with Shrek ( Myers) playing the doting daddy to three demanding ogre-lets,as beaming wife Fiona( Diaz) looks on approvingly. The tiny ogres who do what all babies do : feed and burp and poo,keeping Shrek on his toes,as he shuttles between diaper changes and chucking used nappies into the bin. Wagonloads of tourists show up to goggle at the domesticated ogre and his happy family : look,there he is,mommy,the ogre! He autographs pitchforks,and obligingly roars for a brat at a birthday party.

It turns out,of course,that Shrek is a bit tired of this whole thing,and the evil Rumpelstiltskin ( Dohrn) taps into that discontent,tricking him into an agreement which spells doom for the denizens of Far Far Away . The king and queen,Fiona’s parents,sign away their kingdom for a song,and by the time Shrek wakes up to the trickery,it’s all too late.

Everything he has known and loved does not exist : Donkey( Murphy) doesn’t know him,Puss In Boots ( Banderas) has become a rotund little fellow,Fiona thinks she rescued herself from the castle,and Rumpel and his bad guys take over the land.

It is a satisfactory way to end the series,which had begun to feel a little stretched by the third ‘Shrek’ film. The new character,Rumpel,is suitably villainous ( he’s also funny,just to keep the little tykes happy,yelling instructions in a squeaky voice to his band of witches),and the Pied Piper is a bad fellow too,having sold his soul for a few of Rumpel’s sheckels.

This one also has Donkey in a bigger role than in the previous one,even if Puss is strangely subdued,and in a few parts could have been perkier and crisper. The witches are a clump of blackness,and have no real character. But what makes up for all this is Shrek,the jolly green monster with a wide,wide smile,who is as much of a delight as he’s always been. Fiona doesn’t bore us too : as the armour-plated queen of the resistance ( she heads a band of ogres to wrest the kingdom back from Rumpel) she has spunk,and a light in the eye. And the kiss that they share has more feeling and sweetness that ones conducted calculatedly by the humans in ‘Kites’.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com