Metacritic reviews

Hilarious and heartfelt from start to finish, this is the best Shrek of them all, and that's no fairy tale.

This movie is a last chance to save the series, which it does.

This is - allegedly - the final chapter in the series, and everyone involved appears invigorated.

Everyone involved fulfills his or her job requirements adequately. But the magic is gone, and Shrek Forever After is no longer an ogre phenomenon to reckon with. Instead, it's a "Hot Swamp Time Machine."

Reveals a definite been-there, done-that feeling.

The reputed swan song for the series and its first entry in 3D, pic contains a respectable number of laughs, but also borrows its storyline from the oft-recycled "It's a Wonderful Life," and if that's all its creators can do, it's best to put Far Far Away far far away.

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.

If you found "Shrek the Third," the third film in the "Shrek" franchise, tired, it will probably come as no surprise that Shrek Forever After is downright exhausted.

Forever After still goes down like warmed-over porridge. You don’t have to be Goldilocks to think that this time they’ve cooked their Golden Goose.

Third times are rarely charms in the movies, much less fourth go-rounds, and it takes more than ho-hum 3-D and video-game-ready action sequences to liven up diminishing returns