Did poor values sink Shrek 4?

By Beaver Believer
Oregon writer

The first headline movie headline flop of the year has been Shrek.  Ye sit made $70 Million and debuted at number #1, but it was far below projection.  It was also below the previous sequels.   That has qualified it enough as an unexpected low performer high budget film.  While the critics have few answers, I have one that deals with basic American family values.

I loved Shrek and Shrek 2.  Yet, I was surprisingly disgusted withg Shrek 3.   A pastor friend of mine actually took his boys out of the theater and apologized to them because the film was so bad.     Shrek 3 was an overdose of toilet , sexual and gender-bending humor absent any earned laughs.   Everyone I know who watched it said that seeing the elderly Merlin walk around in his mini-skirt was just downright creepy.    The whole movie was nothing more than the rounding up of all of our favorite fairy tale characters and then proceeding to insult and lampoon them all in various ways.     This is symbolic of many Hollywood films which create absolutely  nothing original but rather steal other works of creativity and then proceed to tear them down because artistic destruction is easier than actual creativity.

The Shrek series is no small matter as the second movie went on to become the third highest grossing movie in cinema history.    Outside of sequel burn-out, I believe that the reason Shrek 4 underperformed was due in part to families tired of taking their kids to indecent family films.   Many families still vote with their feet.  This month demonstrated that there are enough of these families to make the difference between whether a movie becomes a blockbuster or just a buster.   I encourage all movie goers to follow their values when choosing movies.

I hope that Shrek 4 is a return to their original good spirited fun and originality.  After being burned by Shrek 3 — I guess I will never know.

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