Ray Pride

If Terry Gilliam's misanthropic misfire, "Tideland," taught us anything, it is that a real trainwreck, not a metaphorical one, ought to be depicted as a crushing, onrushing, unmoored bulwark of metal and spark and fire and steam and dread. The charmless, innocuous, overpopulated, hardly written "Shrek the Third" is the first depiction of a trainwreck I've ever witnessed set to "mute." (And "Tideland" is a better movie.) While there are isolated gags that are either inspired or satisfying to the stupid child in all of us, such as the one oft-repeated in commercials, of a post-"Mr. Bill" gingerbread cookie that poops an M&M from quaking fear, and a few quick glimpses of a nerd having a nosebleed (the only time I heard uniform laughter), they're few and far between. I have resisted the temptation to Google the phrase, "Shrek The Turd." Long passages of inertia are broken up by gusts of tedium. Most of the settings and the themes--of the fear of having children, something dealt with ickily, stickily, hilariously and with great, great heart in Judd Apatow's upcoming powerhouse comedy "Knocked Up"--seem less about satisfying a diverse audience than about addressing middle-aged verging on sclerotic issues close to the makers of "Shrek": wealth, the fear of losing wealth and whether their children will have cause to hate them just for being older and irrelevant to them. (The joke music cues tend toward the iPods of those born in the 1940s or 1950s as well, such as Heart's "Barracuda.") Let's throw in a cooking metaphor: "Shrek the Third" is like a complex sauce made by someone with no sense of smell. Cameron Diaz and Eric Idle, voicing a knobby-kneed wizard, are the only voices that shine through. For most of the movie, Mike Myers' Shrek, Eddie Murphy's Donkey and Antonio Banderas' Puss-`n'-Boots don't sound phoned-in, they sound phoned-in by uninspired imitators. (Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Puss? Yes.) At several points, dozens, nay, hundreds of characters fill the screen. These incomprehensible passages are more like a reading from the Far Far Away telephone directory than any kind of fun. (How in the ungodly fuck do you mess up the framing and timing of a joke about one of the three blind mice tumbling out of frame down a flight of cement stairs?) I think the last word ought to be left for the youngest critic in the room at the Tuesday night screening I attended, a croupy little girl who gooed loudly at a quiet moment about forty-five minutes in, "Mommy, can we go home and watch `Shrek'?"

(2007-05-18)

Also by Ray Pride

How goes the Jihad?
A wicked bedazzlement and some sort of fucked-up treasure, Hal Hartley's comedy-turned-terror "Fay Grim" is as misunderstood (and darkly subversive) as the deepest runnels of American foreign policy
(2007-05-15)

Tip of the Week
Chicago's one of the lucky cities to get Winnipeg anachronist Guy Maddin's latest rumpus as a live event
(2007-05-15)

One Dish
A couple over the course of a night out hit the spot, and they lack the light skunkiness of the canned version
(2007-05-14)

Tip of the Week
Sleek, stripped down and mean as they come, "28 Weeks Later," Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's sequel to Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later," is a grim, sincerely nihilist, urgently political, wholly contemporary parable about life in wartime
(2007-05-08)

The Tyranny of Distance
(2007-05-08)

One Dish
(2007-05-07)

Beer in Gear
(2007-05-07)

Franchise This
(2007-05-01)

Tip of the Week
(2007-05-01)

Love, Truly Love
(2007-04-27)

Monsieur Pignon, I Presume
(2007-04-24)

Tip of the Week
(2007-04-24)

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