Shrek Forever After
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- PLOT
The film begins just before Shrek rescues Princess Fiona in the first film. Desperate to lift their daughter’s curse, King Harold and Queen Lillian meet with con artist Rumpelstiltskin, who requests becoming king of Far Far Away in curry exchange. Just before the deal is contracted, the king and queen learn that Fiona has already been rescued. In the present, a disgruntled Rumpelstiltskin wishes Shrek was never born and seeks revenge.
Meanwhile, Shrek has grown tired of being a domesticated family man and celebrity among the local villagers, leading him to yearn for the days when he felt like a “real ogre.” It is his children’s birthday party where lots of fictional characters appear. Shrek gets easily annoyed here as the 3 little pigs eat the children’s cake up and a little kid called Butterpants keeps wanting him to do his infamous roar. After lashing out at his family and friends during the party, Shrek storms off and meets with Rumpelstiltskin, who offers to give Shrek a day to live like a real ogre again in exchange for a day from his childhood he wouldn’t remember being erased. Shrek agrees and signs the contract, and abruptly lands in a world where he is still feared by villagers. He enjoys causing mischief until he finds wanted posters for the ogress Fiona and his home deserted. He is suddenly captured by witches and taken to Rumpelstiltskin, who is now the king of Far Far Away and uses ogres for slave labor.
Shrek realizes that the day Rumpelstiltskin erased was the day he was born, meaning he never existed in this world before and is unrecognized by everyone he knows. Furthermore, when the day ends, Shrek will fade from existence. Shrek escapes Rumpelstiltskin’s castle with the enslaved Donkey. Initially terrified of Shrek, Donkey decides to trust him after seeing Shrek cry, something he had never seen an ogre do before. After Shrek explains the situation, Donkey helps him find a loophole: the contract will be rendered null and void if Shrek and Fiona share true love’s kiss before the 24 hours are up. Donkey sees some waffles and is tempted to eat them but Shrek says no, accidentally Donkey dribbles on them and is cast down a hole with Shrek running after him. After speaking to many ogres who seem to live down the hole, they find Fiona who, still cursed after escaping from the tower where she was held captive, is the leader of an ogre resistance against Rumpelstiltskin and keeps the retired and overweight Puss in Boots as a pet.
Shrek does everything he can to gain Fiona’s love, but she is too busy preparing an ambush on Rumpelstiltskin during his nightly ogre hunt. However, the ogres are caught in a trap instead and captured. Shrek insists Fiona kiss him, saying it will fix everything, but because Fiona doesn’t love him, it is ineffective. Upon hearing that Rumpelstiltskin is offering anything desired by the one who captures Shrek with no strings attached, Shrek turns himself in in exchange for all ogres being released, but Fiona remains in custody because she is only an ogre by night due to her curse. Shrek and Fiona are set to be fed to Dragon, but Donkey, Puss and the ogres raid Rumpelstiltskin’s castle, allowing Shrek and Fiona to subdue both Dragon and Rumpelstiltskin.
As the sun rises, Shrek begins to fade from existence, but Fiona, having fallen in love with him all over again, kisses him just before he disappears completely, which nullifies the contract and restores Shrek to his world just before he originally lashed out at everyone. Shrek embraces his friends and family with newfound appreciation for everything he has, truly living happily forever after.
- Critical reception
Shrek Forever After received mixed to positive reviews with several critics claiming that the film is better than Shrek the Third but is not as great as compared to Shrek and Shrek 2. Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 58% of critics have given the film a positive review, based on 178 reviews, with an average score of 5.9/10. Its consensus states “While not without its moments, Shrek Forever After too often feels like a rote rehashing of the franchise’s earlier entries.” Among Rotten Tomatoes’ Cream of the Crop, which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television, and radio programs, the film holds an overall positive rating of 41% based on 32 reviews.[18] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 58 based on 34 reviews.
Pete Hammond of Boxoffice gave the film 4.5 stars out of 5 writing “Hilarious and heartfelt from start to finish, this is the best Shrek of them all, and that’s no fairy tale. Borrowing liberally from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, this edition blends big laughs and emotion to explore what Far Far Away might have been like if Shrek never existed.” James Berardinelli of Reelviews awarded the film 3/4 stars stating “Even though Shrek Forever After is obligatory and unnecessary, it’s better than Shrek 3 and it’s likely that most who attend as a way of saying goodbye to the Jolly Green Ogre will not find themselves wishing they had sought out a more profitable way of spending 90-odd minutes.” Writing her critique for Entertainment Weekly, Lisa Schwarzbaum graded the film a B- claiming “Everyone involved fulfills his or her job requirements adequately. But, the magic is gone, and Shrek Forever After is no longer an ogre phenomenon to reckon with.” Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers wrote “This is a fun ride. What’s missing is the excitement of new interpretation.”[23] Mary Pols, film critic for Time, concluded her review with “Can an ogre jump a shark? I think so.” Giving the film 1 star out of 4, Kyle Smith of New York Post wrote that “After the frantic spurt of fairy-tale allusions and jokes in the first three Shreks, this one inches along with a few mostly pointless action scenes and the occasional mild pun.”
