SHREK FOREVER AFTER In this fourth and final installment in the Shrek franchise, our green hero feels emasculated by the grind of domesticity (marriage, fatherhood) and worn down by the demands of celebrity. His failure to realize that his is indeed a wonderful life leads him to utter a wish for just one day to cavort in his old life of swampy bachelorhood. The wish is granted by the conniving Rumpelstiltskin, whose enforcement of contractual fine-print lands Shrek in a brutal parallel universe in which Rumpelstiltskin rules the kingdom of Far, Far Away with an army of witches as his muscle. There, Fiona (in Xena mode) leads an underground resistance movement, Donkey has no memory of Shrek but still steals almost every scene he's in, and an obese Puss walks away with whatever scenes Donkey doesn't. It takes the film a deadly long time to kick in, and when it does, it largely retreads formula: ironic use of pop standards, musical numbers with contemporary choreography played for maximum laughs, risqué one-liners. By the middle of the second act, Forever After finally finds its groove, becoming mildly amusing (the actors — Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas — are in fine form) but never rising to the inspired heights of the original. And the 3-D effects are so weak as to bring nothing to the table. (Ernest Hardy) (Citywide)
SOLITARY MAN Directors Brian Koppelman and David Levien, frequent writing partners who scripted Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, have here created The Michael Douglas Experience; whether you respond to the material depends largely on how much you enjoy the actor lazily riffing on the oily creatures of his past. After a prologue set six and a half years ago shows thriving car-dealership owner and loyal husband Ben Kalmen (Douglas) being told by his doctor that there's an irregularity in his EKG, the film returns to the present, with the damage of his mortality scare already done. Divorced from college sweetheart Susan Sarandon and his business ruined, Ben is free to continue his pathetic behavior: bedding girlfriend Mary-Louise Parker's 18-year-old daughter and asking his own daughter, Susan (Jenna Fischer, the most revelatory of the crowded, hardworking supporting cast), for rent money. Koppelman's script contains some tart dialogue about deluded, middle-aged male vanity — "Give me a hug, so people will think we're married," Ben tells Susan — and the film courageously shows its reprobate hero sliding further, not redeeming himself. "The men who live like Ben Kalmen all model themselves after characters Michael has played," Koppelman says in the press notes — and the lead is all too content not to stretch himself beyond playing a copy of a copy of a copy. (Melissa Anderson) (ArcLight Hollywood)
