Shrek 2

More of the same, with the ex-beauty and the beast emerging from an idyllically grubby honeymoon to sink into marital tensions fomented by her dad (openly devastated that his princess is hitched to an ogre) and by a fairy godmother who'd secretly rather her own gormless Prince Charming son had got the girl. That's the predicament that passes for plot. As for gags, they're hit or miss, and diminish in their effectiveness as the film progresses, since so many rest on the single anachronistic conceit of having the medieval world match modern LA. The endless allusions to pop culture icons, advertising, fast food, the movies and so forth become irritating when you recall that this spilling over of late capitalism's shallow values into the past mirrors what's happening to the rest of us now. And DreamWorks are perpetuating that process and profiting from it with product like this. Still, the animation's slick in a cautious, cute, conventional kind of way, and some scenes are really very funny.