I think we all can agree that Shrek the Third was a gigantic steaming ogre-load of fail on a scale we hadn’t previously believed, or wanted to believe, was possible.

But thanks to the wonder that is alternate history, the grandest of science fiction subgenres, Shrek Forever After managed to rediscover its roots before its (only possibly) final curtain.

We’re back with the ogres once again in Shrek Forever After (which is also being referred to as Shrek The Final Chapter), and Shrek is not taking settling down well.  Much like the orcs in the Jonathan Coulton video “Shop Vac“, the day to day grind of life, when so many days look exactly like the day that preceded them, doesn’t suit Shrek.  Where are the days when he was feared?  When his swamp was his swamp and he could do as he pleased?  Out of an all too familiar longing to recapture those glory days, Shrek makes a deal with the down-and-out Rumplestiltskin (who is really only down-and-out in the first place because of Shrek, as it turns out) that goes tragically wrong.  Now, ogres are hunted by the new ruler of Far Far Away, and most everybody else is living in a kind of brutal squalor that has been described by the folks out at TV Tropes as a “crapsack world”.  The Gingerbread Man, for example, is now a pastry gladiator fighting hordes of animal crackers for the citizens’ amusement.  Now, Shrek’s got to find a way to get out of Rumplestiltskin’s contract before sunrise the next day or face extinction.

Like I said, HUGE alternate history going on here.  Relationships that have long been the focus of the entire series are now suddenly null and void, and it’s as though we’re seeing the whole thing for the first time again.  And this manages to solve the biggest problem of the Shrek series–they knew they had a good thing going with the first one, so they took no chances.  It was a constant litany of More Of The Same.  Now, everything’s fundamentally altered for most of the movie and this gives us an extra note of originality that hasn’t been present in previous versions.

Granted, it was going to be pretty hard to make something much worse than the third one, but this one is actually a step up, and that’s not something you often see of a film that goes over trilogy rank.  And on an objective level, this is still nothing great, certainly nothing on par with the first.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale is left to give Shrek Forever After a six out of ten for making something that at least looks like a silk purse out of a rapidly declining sow’s ear.  The trouble here is that it still at least smells like pork.