Film Reviews
ANIMATION/COMEDY SHREK FOREVER AFTER (U) 93min ●●●●●
After the patience-sapping Shrek the Third, DreamWorks’s animation department offer a fourth and final instalment, rebooting the flagging franchise with a new alternate-reality twist. This year’s monster hit How To Train Your Dragon suggested that the studio’s output was reaching Pixar levels of sophistication, but Shrek Forever After is a warmed-over sequel that lazily re- configures familiar elements to mildly pleasing effect. Shrek (Mike Myers) and Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) now enjoy domestic harmony in their swamp, with a brood of little green ogres to take care of. When the stress of fatherhood causes Shrek to have a meltdown during the kids’ first birthday party, the crafty Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrm) offers the ogre the chance to swap one day in his life in return for a temporary return to his toxic-bachelor lifestyle. In the style of It’s A Wonderful Life, Shrek is transported to a world where he never existed, and forced to join forces with his old chums Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) on a mission to return things to the status quo.
Shrek Forever After coasts along on the audience’s goodwill towards well-loved characters, with a selection of modish pop-culture references in the place of decent jokes or character development. The cheeky freshness that this tactic once provided now seems stale; when Donkey gets lovey-dovey with his dragon-mate and Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’ plays on the soundtrack, the result is less knowing than just plain cheesy. And while seeing Shrek and Fiona leading an underground revolution of disenfranchised ogres against Rumpelstiltskin’s ruling class of witches might be a fresh angle, this plotline removes all the references to the familiar territory of Far Far Away, and abandons the neatly inverted satire of Disney family values that made the first two films so entertaining.
Despite the played-out nature of director Mike Mitchell’s sequel, children will probably still enjoy the fairytale gags, but adults are likely to find the increasingly curmudgeonly nature of Shrek’s character a trial; the fun still seeps through, but the original charm and magic of the Shrek series is all but gone. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 2 Jul.
DOCUMENTARY GOOD HAIR (12A) 95min ●●●●● Chris Rock with mouth largely agape enters Louis Theroux presenter territory with this documentary on the relationship between African-American women and their hair. The desire of black Americans to get rid of the kinks in their afro and get more 'white' hairstyles has been a hot topic amongst African Americans for decades: Malcolm X rallied against it, Spike Lee’s School Daze poked fun at the lengths girls will go and of course Michael Jackson was constantly chastised for using relaxers. Rock, as is his shtick, chooses comedy over social political commentary at every turn on this adventure that takes him from beauty shops in Harlem to hair manufacturing plants in India. For the uninitiated, the observations and discoveries are often startling. The cost of haircuts and the sexual habits of women with wigs and weaves is bewildering. Rock wonders why the hair products aimed only at black folk are pretty much only manufactured by companies owned by whites and Koreans. There is a plethora of memorable interviews with stars such as Nia Long and Ice T (he has the last line in the movie and it’s a killer). Where director Jeff Stilson falls flat is with the fascination with a kitsch hair show in Atlanta that is supposed to give the documentary a dramatic arc but instead is like pouring water on an otherwise fine weave. (Kaleem Aftab) ■ Selected release from Fri 25 Jun.
COMEDY GET HIM TO THE GREEK (15) 108min ●●●●●
Russell Brand proved a big hit Stateside with his role as debauched popstar Aldous Snow in Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. For this spin-off, writer Segel and director Stoller use the tried-and-tested format of the Judd Apatow stable, with the bearded comic matched up with Superbad’s Jonah Hill for a raunchy bromance.
Retreading the plot of Richard Benjamin’s underrated 1982 showbiz scene
comedy My Favourite Year, Hill plays Aaron Green, a music industry flunky instructed by his boss Sergio (Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs) to escort the erratic Snow from London to the Greek Theatre in LA for a comeback concert. Despite their obvious differences, Snow and Green quickly bond over alcohol, sex and narcotics abuses, giving the shy executive a misplaced sense of confidence in himself. Get Him to the Greek runs out of steam midway, but Brand, Hill and Combs in
particular cope well with the music industry satire, with Snow’s po-faced sense of his own importance nicely skewered. As with his live performances, Brand’s self- parody gives way to annoying narcissism, but not before Get Him to the Greek has hit enough targets to pass muster as a sharp lampoon of celebrity culture. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 25 Jun.
46 THE LIST 24 Jun–8 Jul 2010