A forgettable fairy-tale
by Michael Phillips (buzz@boulderweekly.com)

In Shrek the Third, there's a scene in which the frog King Harold (voice by John Cleese), ward boss of Far Far Away, is dying. He utters his last words, and then — old joke for a new generation — no, he's not dead, he's still alive, and says a bit more, and expires, but in fact ...

The scene's supposed to be funny but sad, too, and then in the funeral sequence the oh-so-not-quite-hip soundtrack fills the theater with "Live and Let Die." By that point you're thinking: Huh? The effect is very sour. Using Paul McCartney's Bond theme doesn't work as parody or sincerity or anything, really. The film has its moments but is similarly conflicted.

Uninterested in being king and freaked out about becoming a father, Shrek embarks on a quest with Donkey (Eddie Murphy, virtually sidelined) and Puss (Antonio Banderas, a bright spot) to locate Fiona's estranged cousin. He's a put-upon high school kid (voiced by Justin Timberlake, forgettably) with royal blood. Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) has other plans for Far Far Away and gathers together a mass of storybook villains to implement a takeover.

The earlier Shrek films operated on a mixture of revisionist fairy-tale sarcasm and just enough heart to get folks like first lady Laura Bush in their corner, along with millions of media-saturated preteens. (Bush told one interviewer she adored the first one.) I doubt even rabid fans of the first two will consider Shrek the Third a worthy addition to the franchise. Some amusing bits pop up, as when Pinocchio starts spouting evasive lawyerspeak lest he be forced to tell an actual untruth. But director Chris Miller, one of several screenwriters who turns movies into jokes about Hooters and dinner theater, lets the swamp thing of the title get lost in his own tale.

As before, the clinical, hyper-crisp computer animation style looks weirdly realistic even though the milieu is fantastical. This means, when someone gets clobbered on the noggin, you tend not to laugh. In visual terms, little of the slapstick comes with the necessary imaginative distance, though if this calculated amalgam of snark and heart had more wit, you wouldn't think much about not loving the way it looks.

—Chicago Tribune Movie Critic

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A film and a tribute
by Michael Wilmington
(buzz@boulderweekly.com)

Waitress is a blithe indie about three waitresses and their romantic problems in a small Southern town — with the main focus on discontented, pregnant "pie genius" Jenna (Keri Russell). Written and directed by the late Adrienne Shelly, it's a scrumptious romantic comedy, a mostly adorable movie from a witty and winning movie talent whom we lost all too soon.

Jenna is a waitress-pie chef who can work magic with crisp crusts and creamy fillings but is married to self-absorbed bully Earl (Jeremy Sisto), who grabs her paychecks and hollers or blubbers when he can't get his way. How much more appealing than Earl seems the new guy in town: Jenna's gynecologist, the seemingly shy but easily ignitable Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), with whom she has a dangerous affair. Simultaneously, her buddies and fellow waitresses at Joe's Diner — outspoken Becky (Cheryl Hines of Curb Your Enthusiasm) and self-conscious Dawn (Shelly) — score their own romances with, respectively, the diner's macho manager Cal (Lew Temple), and determined nerdy beau Ogie (Eddie Jemison).

Overseeing all this is that emperor of Southern small-town comedy Andy Griffith. (Yeah, I loved the early seasons of his '60s TV show, too). Fittingly, Griffith plays the owner of Joe's Diner, a curmudgeonly type who takes a shine to Jenna.

With its delirious sweetness and compassionate humor, Waitress would earn our sympathy, but even more so because of Shelly's murder in November, at age 40. That makes the movie something of a sad affair, but it also makes us all the happier that she completed it as the final legacy of the indie movie charmer who won our hearts in Hal Hartley's offbeat sagas Trust and The Unbelievable Truth. She has kept them since, as an actress in a string of low- and medium-budget movies and as the auteur of two other sprightly comedies, Sudden Manhattan and I'll Take You There.

Shelly, a diminutive New York redhead with a bewitchingly crooked smile and flashing eyes, always struck me as an extremely lovable screen presence, someone who never quite got the roles she deserved. (In 1997, when I interviewed her for Sudden Manhattan, she obviously wanted to make Woody Allen movies, and he should have given her a shot. When she started writing and directing films, it seemed partly a way to get the kind of parts denied her elsewhere.)

But in Waitress, Shelly casts herself as the wallflower/supporting comedienne and gives the plum star part to Russell, an empathetic actress and a more conventional screen beauty than Shelly. That unselfish gesture shows how good and committed a filmmaker Shelly had become. Russell is fine. But I wish Shelly had written herself another lead or were around to write more movies for us. The ending of Waitress is so beguiling and whimsical that it makes you, like Jenna's pies, hungry for more — and it makes you miss that red-headed movie auteur/pastry chef/heart-stealer Shelly even more.

—Chicago Tribune Movie Critic

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