Shrek the Third first look

(Source: Jim Hill Media)

Buddy Glass, a Jim Hill Media reader, managed to catch a preview screening of Dreamworks Animation's heavily-anticipated Shrek the Third. This is apparently the first time anyone outside of the studio has ever seen the movie. According to this report, the Dreamworks rep admitted that the flick was only 40% complete, and that a lot of the scenes were still at the storyboard stage.

Glass' assessment? Shrek the Third isn't nearly as strong as Shrek 2, which pulled in a colossal $436 million at the box office in 2004. According to Glass, the movie needs some serious script surgery before it's ready for theatres.

"The biggest problem with the movie," writes Buddy Glass in his report, "is that it lacks the fast and furious humor of the others (especially Shrek 2), the witty songs (like the "Be Our Guest" parody), and the endless throwaway gags that made people NEED to see Shrek 2 over and over again . . . they need to hire some funny script doctors that can bring in a lot more gags-per-minute than they have now. My kids were really fidgety during a lot of it and I became bored numerous times, rarely laughing heartily. Asked afterward to name favorite moments and they had a hard time."

Those are some harsh words for an important film in Dreamworks' 2007 schedule. You can check out the whole review here.

Keep this in mind when reading: Moviemaking is a brutal business. Studios will often employ "independent reviewers" to hype their products and diss the competition. You can often see their work on most IMDb User Review pages.

The most famous example was Sony's "David Manning" scandal. David Manning was a phony reviewer created by the studio to hype their movies, particularly the 2001 live-action flick A Knight's Tale. He supposedly wrote for the Ridgefield Press, but Newsweek reporter John Horn discovered that the newspaper had never even heard of him. The ensuing scandal forced Sony to refund $5 to anyone who had seen one of their pictures between August 2000 and October 2001.

I'm not saying that this report on Shrek the Third is bogus, but I am surprised that Dreamworks would show previews of a film eight whole months before its release date, especially one as important as Shrek the Third. Is this legit, or is a rival studio trying to pull the wheels off the Shrek bandwagon by giving this film a negative buzz? Something to consider.

My advice? Go ahead and read, but take this report with a sizable grain of salt. You always have to double and triple-check your stories when you read them on the Web.

Shrek the Third hits theatres May 18, 2007.

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