As with any artist, the third album is the most difficult. Expectation’s high, options are limited. Stray from formula and loose your fans, stay the course and risk boring your audience. So it is we find Shrek, trying to keep everyone happy when he becomes acting-King of Far Far Away. It’s a big job he doesn’t want and he looks for a replacement in distant cousin Arthur. Shrek, Puss in Boots and Donkey, now a distracted father of several winged, fire-breathing baby-donkeys, journey to find the boy and bring him to his crown. In Shrek’s absence, petulant Prince Charming stages a coup that forces pregnant Princess Fiona to defend the realm. She enlists the reluctant help of society princesses, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella among them.

Seven years have passed since Shrek was first uprooted from his swamp; his fans and their parents have aged with him. So an angsty, middle-aged story is a natural fit for a nervous ogre entertaining the prospects of fatherhood. Shrek The Third holds its funny-bone foremost and few would be overly disappointed, though the film is a paler version of its self that wants for the stinging pop references and satirical bite of its predecessors. Growing up clearly takes it out of you, and it his wake we’re offered funny-Dad rather than funny-funny. There are moments, particularly in the scalding vanity of Rupert Everett’s Prince Charming. But getting his third album to the masses has not been easy for Shrek, despite holding the new box-office record for an animated opening.

Trying to keep every happy, Shrek The Third has stuck too closely to its name: familiar, slightly off kilter and oddly staid.

// COLIN FRASER