Word: shrek
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, perhaps at the moment when the entire principal cast has been pointlessly drenched in water for the millionth time, you may feel the need for a consoling thought. Here it is: The apparently inexorable march of the sequels (Spidey 3, Shrek the Third already, with Ocean's Thirteen and Bourne something or other speeding toward us, all began with a pretty novel, (or at least entertaining) first film. You can extend that observation to lots of other series-Superman, Batman, Die Hard (which is also being recycled in a few weeks...
...Chenoweth gets excellent support from the two comic leads: the giant, sweetly Shrek-like Chamberlin and the smaller Christopher Fitzgerald, who makes me think of Sean Penn reconfigured as a tummeling song-and-dance man. I also liked the unaffected geniality of Shonn Wiley and was dazzled to submission by Kendrick Jones, tap-dancer supreme and a handsome charmer, if I may say, to boot...
...fact, the strongest moments in Shrek the Third come when it steps back from the frantic pop-culture name dropping of Shrek 2 and you realize that its Grimm parodies have become fleshed-out characters in their own right. In August, Paramount releases Stardust, an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman novel about a nerdy 19th century lad who ventures from England to a magical land to retrieve a fallen star. The live-action movie covers many of the same themes as the ubiquitous cartoon parodies--be yourself, don't trust appearances, women can be heroic too. But it creates...
Sound like a formula to you? What these stories are reacting against is not so much fairy tales in general as the specific, saccharine Disney kind, which sanitized the far-darker originals. (As did Shrek, by the way. In the William Steig book, the ogre is way more brutal, scary and ... ogreish.) But the puncturing of the Disney style is in danger of becoming a cliché itself. The pattern--set up, then puncture, set up, then puncture--is so relentless that it inoculates the audience against being spellbound, training them to wait for the other shoe to drop whenever they...
...feel like a traitor to my fellow parents for even saying this. These movies are made in part for me: a socially progressive, irony-friendly Gen Xer with rug rats. I thought Hoodwinked! and most of the Shrek series were hilarious, and God knows I don't want to go back to the days of suffering with my kids through a long, slow pour of Uncle Walt's wholesome syrup. But even if you ultimately reject their messages, old-school fairy tales are part of our cultural vocabulary. There's something a little sad about kids growing...