Movie Reviews: After the Cup, Shrek Forever After, Prince of Persia

SHREK FOREVER AFTER In this fourth and final installation 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, risque 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)

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD The sixth installment in George A. Romero's long-running horror serial (est. 1967), follows Sarge Crockett (Alan Van Sprang) as he leads his gone-rogue unit of National Guardsmen from the zombie-pestilent mainland to "Plum Island, Delaware." There, the returned departed are feuded over by two family-armies led by Irish patriarchs. Once ashore the island, seemingly preserved in the 1880s, Romero piles on plotlines and Western tropes: six-shooters, an Anthony Mann Oedipal ranch hand, a bona fide scalping and a homo-flirty mentor-student rapport between Van Sprang and Devon Bostick, an orphaned teen he picked up. Bostick's character allows 70-year-old Romero to continue his uncomprehending fascination with gadget-addicted Millennials talking about things "on the 'Net," which made Diary of the Dead excruciating assurance that Survival could only possibly be the second-worst Dead movie. Romero's own embrace of new technology includes silly CGI violence like a noggin blown clean away, leaving the scalp to plop on the neck stump, or zombie eyeballs sproinging out of sockets like novelty glasses. The script reunites the writer-director's familiar preoccupations with the family-as-hell, creeping Catholicism and stock rednecks. The inevitable all-you-can-eat orgy of zombies pulling stringy mouthfuls away from red, wet rib cages may satisfy gorehounds, but big set pieces showing how atrophied Romero's cutting and tactical framing have become is depressing to anyone who has valued his films for more than just splatter. (Nick Pinkerton) (Citywide)