Director: Mike Mitchell.

Cast: (voices of) Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas, Walt Dohrn.

AFTER beginning as a Pixar-rivalling franchise, the Shrek series seriously dropped the ball with Shrek The Third.

Thankfully, they chose not to leave fans with a bad taste in their mouth and returned for one last - and much improved - installment of the jolly green ogre's adventures.

It's his jolliness, or lack thereof, that drives Shrek Forever After. The Scottish-accented ogre (voiced again by Myers) finds himself in a mid-life crisis, becoming increasingly frustrated with the day-in-day-out drudgery of raising triplets with his wife Fiona (Diaz) and longing for the times when he was a feared monster that could do whatever he liked.

Enter the devious Rumplestiltskin (Dohrn), who offers Shrek a too-good-to-be-true deal - Shrek can have one day back in his old ways to "treat himself", but one day from his past will vanish from existence.

Naturally the offer really is too good to be true and Shrek soon finds himself in an alternate reality where he was never born and therefore never rescued Fiona (as seen in the first film). Instead she's the leader of an ogre resistance in a kingdom ruled by Rumplestiltskin and his army of evil witches.

Shrek Forever After is a vast improvement on Shrek The Third because it ditches the majority of the lazy pop culture references that riddled the threquel, gives its hero a serious emotional - and even existential - crisis, and comes up with a plot that is focused and with much more at stake.

It's still not a patch on the first two, and while funnier than ...The Third, it's fairly light on for laughs. Thankfully a plumped-up Puss In Boots is on hand to bring some humour, as are a string of bit players whose presence is purely for gags, while Rumplestiltskin serves as perhaps the best villain of the series.

But it still can't resist doing something completely stupid musically, like throwing in an incongruous extended dance sequence, but at least it keeps the Smash Mouth songs to a minimum.

Interestingly, ...Forever After's biggest influence appears not to be fairy tales this time, but rather the Back To The Future series - Shrek's own selfish actions play into the hands of a villain and place him in a darker version of the present (as seen in BTTF2), and if he doesn't set things right he will disappear because he won't have been born (as seen in the first BTTF). There's even a scene where Rumplestiltskin drops off an edge rather than face his foe, only to land safely on a giant airborne goose just below - a direct lift from a scene in BTTF2 (if you substitute the giant airborne goose for a flying DeLorean). Or have I just watched Back To The Future too many times?

The adventures of Marty McFly aside, Shrek Forever After is a solid farewell to the series, which will have fans forgiving the makers for Shrek The Third but longing for the quality of the first two films.