After joyless “Shrek the Third” the green ogre should retire to his swamp

Soren Andersen, for the Northwest Guardian

Welcome to the jolly world of “Shrek the Third.”

That would be the world where significant time is devoted early on to a somber deathbed scene where the key player, a frog, croaks three times as his loved ones look on sadly. Just when you think he’s breathed his last, he gasps, revives and dies again. Then he repeats the feat.

A funeral in the rain follows the long-delayed final breath.

What precedes this scene of serial dying is a sequence of bad dinner theater complete with nasty catcalls aimed at the talent-free thespian onstage. Later on, a dark conspiracy will be hatched in a grimy tavern. A bar fight will break out.

“Um,” you may find yourself wondering, “when is this thing going to get funny?” Short answer: Never.

Well, hardly ever.

If projectile-vomiting scenes tickle your funny bone, “Shrek the Third,” which has a doozy, will get you guffawing.

Other humor high points: A regal queen, voiced by Julie Andrews, no less, head-butting her way through stone walls. An episode of Gingerbread Man incontinence. Infants belching and passing gas. A mass outbreak of this passes for the movie’s big finish.

I’d say it’s time to stick a fork in this animated franchise. It is so done.

The latest outing for the grouchy green ogre and his fairy-tale pals is a porridge of gloom and psychobabble. And it’s refried porridge at that.

Shrek, voiced once more by Mike Myers, is up to his keister in issues. His sweet wife Princess Fiona, again voiced by Cameron Diaz, is pregnant, and the daddy-to-be is wracked with doubts about his suitability for the role of fatherhood.

Also thrust upon his unwilling self by the death of his frog-king father-in-law (John Cleese reprising the role) is the crown of the land called Far Far Away. And while Shrek is uncertain about his suitability for fatherhood, he knows to the core of his ogrish soul that he has no desire or skill to run a kingdom. All he wants to do is romp in his swamp with Fiona.

So off his sails with sidekicks Donkey (Eddie Murphy, back for the third time) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas, back for seconds) to find a true heir, a kid called Artie, as in Arthur, as in King Arthur. Who’s a teen voiced by Justin Timberlake. Who has issues of his own.

He’s nerd boy at his high school, picked on by everyone. And long ago, he was deserted by his dad. He and Shrek, who we learn was similarly abandoned as a lad, get to share a campfire Kumbayah counseling session and male-bonding experience on the way back to Far Far Away.

Meanwhile, scheming Prince Charming (Rupert Everett), the dinner-theater reject, is planning to seize control of Far Far Away with such fairy-tale no-goods as Capt. Hook and the Cyclops. Who can stop these traitorous raiders? Would you believe, Fiona, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Rapunzel, getting all kung fu on the baddies’ butts.

There is no joy to any of this. And no originality.

The kung fu-princess routine is recycled from the first “Shrek,” when Fiona alone stomped the rumps of massed attackers. And if the revolt of the fairy-tale villains angle seems somehow familiar, it’s because it is. “Happily N’Ever After,” a much less polished ‘toon released back in January, got there first.

A subplot has a dithery Merlin the Magician (Eric Idle) performing an inadvertent body-swap of Donkey and Puss. That wrinkle was already old in the '80s when pictures like “18 Again!” and “Vice Versa” milked the concept dry.

The actors don’t seem to be very engaged with their characters and many of those characters, including Donkey and Puss, have the heft of cameos. Fans expect to see them, and so they’ve been written into the picture, but in terms of moving the story along, their contributions are negligible.

All Shrek really wants is to be left in peace in his swamp. After this third go-round, Hollywood should grant his wish. Let him be. Let it be.

Shrek the Third

Director: Chris Miller

Cast: Featuring the voices of Mike Myers (Shrek), Cameron Diaz (Fiona), Eddie Murphy (Donkey), Antonio Banderas (Puss in Boots), Rupert Everett (Prince Charming) and Justin Timberlake (Artie)

Running Time: 1:33

Rating: PG; crude humor, cartoon violence