Never think it’s safe to think film makers won’t push out cliché storylines and reuse ideas to put out cheap humor, just for the sake of money. Make no mistake about it, Shrek 4 is one of them. Even though most young children will find this film amusing, teenagers and adults, will find it nothing more but a disappointment.
Beginning with a flashback, the King of Far Far Away begins to feel displeased about his daughter, Fiona, who has not yet been rescued from the tower for ages. Therefore, he visits Rumpelstiltskin, a magic deal-maker, whom promises to free Fiona, but for a price.
Luckily, as the King was close to signing the agreement, he’s interrupted with good news of his daughter finally being rescued. This was a fairly effective start to give the viewer a good idea of what happened during Fiona’s imprisonment and the history of the witty Rumpelstiltskin.
The story then concentrates on Shrek the ogre, and Fiona and his life with his many children. Shrek started to become bored and was with his current life, which was repetitive and back-aching for him. He then meets the unfortunate Rumpelstiltskin,whom lived his life as a loser ever since he lost to the King. Shrek then signs an agreement with Rumpelstiltskin, in which he will be able to enjoy one day of his former life as a feared, wanted, and free ogre. Unfortunately, just moments into his one day of happiness, Shrek starts to feel uncomfortable and then runs into chaos everywhere he goes.
Even worse, as the movie continues on after Shrek’s agreement with Rumpelstiltskin, the storyline becomes predictable, watered down and rushed. Ironically, this film has more of an adult story, rather than one for children. There was hardly any humor in the film, featured a dark tone and focused too much on Shrek and Fiona’s relationship problems. There was no beauty in the scenery, which was encompassed with maniac witches, warlords, slaves, chaining, imprisonment, punishments and secret societies. The entire movie practically took place during the night. As a result, many children may have some laughs from the few scenes of the movie, but they will find concepts in the film difficult to understand and confusing.
As an adult or teenager watching this film, it may be the typical storyline you can find in many other movies that focuses on love, providing nothing surprising a far cry from the hilarity of the first two films and even the mediocre third.
All in all, the Shrek series of movies started out very witty, funny and original, but slowly became a mess by the last additiom, making it only appropriate that it finally came to an end.
A shame that it had to be this way.
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