Shrek The Third | Joe Szadkowski saw, Animation | ENTERTAINMENT

Shrek The Third


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Shrek The Third, from Paramount Home Entertainment, Rated: PG, $26.95 to $39.99. William Steig's gassy green ogre has returned to the silver screen this year in a story that has Shrek taking on Prince Charming while searching for a more “suitable” heir to the Far Far Away kingdom.

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The goods: This single HD-DVD disk offers a beautiful 1080p digital to digital reproduction of the colorful cartoon film. The result are images so three-dimensional you can almost smell Shrek.

The bads: The 92-minute film is less cutting edge than past films, leaving out some of the more risqué humor. It is possibly more comfortable for the whoe family, however I still giggle when I think about the “Merry Men” and Princess Fiona's unfortunate encounter with lilting bluebird of happiness from the 2001 film.

The mandatory extras: An avalanche of stuff that is more fodder than fun. In fact, so average, that my 8-year old co-reviewer found the bloopers dumb and Merlin's Crystal Ball set top feature "repetitive and pedantic" (or was that Peter Griffin?).

What I learned? The history of the "Happy Birthday" song. You figure out where to find it.

Above and beyond: Props for the 5-minute "How to Be Green" short that offers about a dozen tips for tykes to help save the environment. Includes no references to belching or flatulence.

Fuel the disc revolution: Owners of this HD-DVD version will not be as impressed as with the other releases. They can watch a storyboard version of the film, connect, with some HD DVD players, to a broadband access point where some slightly tech-edgy content can be found and downloaded.

A few other bonuses include a trivia track (already done on standard DVDs) and a biographical overlay (seen during the movie) to access the history of a couple dozen characters. However, the potential best of the bunch, a virtual coloring book, was still not available.

— Joseph Szadkowski