Does this film really need an introduction? Shrek 3, sorry.. Shrek The Third, is everywhere you look at the moment and with it only having been on at the big screen for a matter of days you can still find it popping up as you tune into your every day television shows. Only problem is a lot of people have already picked it up on the black market or downloaded it from the internet. I went to see an evening showing of the movie last night, the first time I have seen Shrek in the cinema, and it had already been pushed on to a small screen making for quite a busy cinema screen. Should be an interesting night.

What they don't do is bring in a new setting or characters really. Whilst I was blown away by Far Far Away in the second movie, once again this becomes the main setting for the film. I know in my review of Shrek 2 not all that long ago I said I would have loved to see more of the fantastically designed Far Far Away landscape, in Shrek The Third they don't really show you all that much more of it. In fact the movie feels kinda rushed, but I'll get to that later on.

Things aren't going well for Prince Charming, which is why he decides to recruit an army of evil characters from Disney cartoon flicks, even including Captain Hook. These characters were a very welcome introduction, although they feel slightly wasted on this movie as know development was put into them. Unless the writers have something very impressive planned for Shrek 4, I can't see how they thought it was a good idea to introduce all these new characters and waste them. With the death of Princess Fiona's (Cameron Diaz) father, Shrek (Mike Myers) is next in line for the throne. Shrek does not want to be king however and this leads to him going off in search of Fiona's cousin to bring him back to rule the kingdom of Far Far Away. With Shrek away, this allows Charming and his army to take over Far Far Away and make plans for him to be the next king.

What is my favourite scene of the movie? Well I loved seeing Gingie's life flash before his eyes, from being born, to having his first kiss, to driving his little gingerbread car. Oh yeah, Pinocchio is quite good too. The only really different scenery for the movie is where Shrek goes when he finds Fiona's cousin, Artie (Justin Timberlake). This scenery is a school, and Artie is getting bullied pretty bad. I was interested to see how Justin Timberlake could perform on the big screen as a voice actor, as I'm yet to see him in real life movies such as Alpha Dog, although I've heard he's really talented. Artie's character was made to look a lot like Justin, but to be honest I couldn't really get on board with the character. I just couldn't take him seriously as the big deal that I think we were supposed to believe he was. Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss In Boots (Antonio Banderas) also come on the journey to the olden days school-meets-current day school.. that probably sounds quite confusing but it does work. Only problem is Donkey is probably the quietest he's been in all the films, and that's never a good thing. It was good to see the return of Dragon though, and the Dragon-Donkey babies got many 'aws' from the audiance.