Dacey wrote:In the end, it took the record for best opening weekend ever for an animated feature, but no one seemed to really notice. Perhaps that was partly because it was sandwhiched between the release dates of Spidey and Pirates, making it seem like "the other threequel" of the month. Or maybe it was because no one really seemed to like it very much.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_new_wink.png)
If the triple detonation of Spidey, Pirates and Shrek 3 should have taught us anything that year, it's that opening weekends make their money on the people going
in to the movie, not the people coming OUT.
But it's not just that. We've seen "Shrek" imitated by so many people now--including DreamWorks themselves--that it no longer feels "special" anymore. To be honest, I'm all for the Puss in Boots movie, mainly because I'm fond of the character, but it's hard for me to get too excited about "Shrek Forever After." I know that I'll still see it, though.
Although I've seen the first movie and bits of the others, I confess I haven't seen a "decline" in the writing from the first one to the sequels (except that the running-gags get more mechanically exploited, like Puss's obligatory kitty-eyes scene)--
It's pretty much been running the same treadmill for three films, except for maybe consciously trying
harder to sell its overbearing PC messaging, after Jeff became aware his "money" was on princess-bashing female audiences who were more interested in the social-avenging than in the jokes.
I still believe most if not pretty much ALL of the first movie's money was made on a mass-hypnosis mania that was a product of the anti-Eisner fervor that was just coming to a boil in '01-'02 (back when we thought "Lilo & Stitch" was the "revolutionary messiah" that was going to lead the final war against Bambi)...Go back and read the reviews, fans were picking any, literally
any references to fairytale characters as a "long-deserved slam at Disney", unquote, whether they resembled the specific characters or not.
And now that Disney is "okay" in the public's mind again, Jeff K. still trying to sell us Angry Princess jokes comes off not so much dated as like the Loud Guy at the Party: You might have briefly thought he was funny at work, but he started thinking he was a hoot, glutted his own market, and now there's no getting rid of him.
I just have to shake my head every time I see some fan who bought into it heart-and-soul eight years earlier now saying "Gee, the new Shrek movie isn't as funny as I remembered the first one...Maybe the new writers aren't as good?"
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_new_razz.png)