Shrek the Third finds our ogre hero (Mike Myers) in a familiar place: resisting being squeezed into a conventional fairy-tale role. Shrek and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) have returned to Far Far Away to fill in for her frog king father after he literally croaks. Shrek would rather trade in the keys to the kingdom for his swamp, so he must track down a distant teen relative of Fiona’s (Justin Timberlake) and convince him to rule. The Shrek pictures are commonly considered fairy-tale spoofs, but they’re far richer than that. These are reinventions, really, which offer thoughtful and witty new definitions of heroism, beauty and what it means to live happily ever after.
