Shrek the Third: B+

"Who knew potential fatherhood could be such a drag?" This is the question I found myself pondering as the first minutes of Shrek the Third took their uneasy, tottering steps. Our perpetual heroic misanthrope, Shrek (still voiced with cantankerous Irish-ness by Mike Meyers), starts off in the film as an unsure father-to-be. His wife, Fiona (Cameron Diaz, still sunny after two sequels), doesn't quite know it yet but her hubby ain't too keen on having rugrats. His uncertainty doesn't bode well for the picture, causing the opening scenes to teeter periously between the enjoyably contrived and the trite. Fear not however; whisked away as he is by a timely death of a certain monarch - a gag played up with lovable Shrek-ness-icity - Shrek soons finds more than enough on his plate other than the eventual bumpkins in Fiona's belly. Lucky for the audience too, as all of his mid-life crisis' woes didn't make for particularly entertaining art (not to mention falling short of the requisite bracing foolery of any long-standing Shrek plot device).

With his trusty sidekicks at his side, Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss-in-boots (Antonio Banderas), Shrek undertakes a valiant quest to rescue a person of royalty and in the process blah blah blah. The story isn't really new, as you can tell, but at least it still whizzes along with atleast twice the delightfulness of, say, Spider-Man 3. Predictable plot contrivances aside, and there are more than enough thank you in the first-half and climax combined, the movie is one of sassy bravura..even after all these years. Consider the way that the ugly step-sisters kibitz through scenes of far more pretty girls, stealing the spot-light in the process. That isn't a flaw on Shrek's part, it's just another one of the numerous flying gags; those indelible creations imagined on page way back with the fairy-tale Shrek and now given some new modicum of energy in the forth iteration - here by director Chris Miller and writers Andrew Adamson, Jeffrey Price, & Peter S. Seaman.

There are more storybook knock-offs to satirize, new characters to fall in love with (Artie, voiced by Justin Timberlake, is a particular favorite of myself...even in all of his mushy studio-produced sentimentality), and lots more visual gags. The latter are products of obviously deranged minds; people who have consumed inordinate amounts of pop culture, taken deep swigs of vodka, and then vommitted their contents all over the screen. The result is hilarious. Likewise the second-bananas of the group (I won't spoil who) are given some mighty cool scenes, some stinging one-liners, and one Willard joke so uniquely witty that it'll have you smiling for the remainder of the film. Who else but the Shrek franchise could cook up a world so deliciously fun in all of its wacky anarchy? Gifted still with a giddily good soundtrack and superb animation - the film makes Prince Charming's (Rupert Everett) hair seem as golden to us as it obviously is to him - the movie buzzes along about as winningly as as anything you'll likely see this summer.

Sure I'll give you that some of the sheen has worn off after six years, that the securely square moral lessons that now end each picture have grown tired, and that Shrek himself seems to be a constantly renewable lackey even after winning the woman and his own happiness. But there still remains very few movies - animated or not - that deliver such a riotous jolt by their credits. The dialogue may fall flat (lets all concede that Ted Elliot was gifted with a far sharper ear) more times than I find comfortable but Shrek the Third retains just enough of its predecessors' glimmering bounce to shine once again.