Box office Shrek the Third opened in 4,122 North American cinemas on May 18, 2007, grossing $38 million on its first day, which was the biggest opening day for an animated film at the time. It grossed a total of $121.6 million in its first weekend, the best opening weekend ever for an animated film, and the second-highest opening for a film in the United States in 2007, behind
Spider-Man 3. It held the animated opening weekend record for nine years until it was surpassed by
Finding Dorys $135.1 million debut in 2016. At the time, its opening weekend was the third-highest of all time domestically, after
Spider-Man 3 and ''
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest''.
Shrek the Third grossed $322.7 million in the United States, and $485.6 million overseas, bringing its cumulative total to $808.3 million. The film was the fourth-highest-grossing film worldwide of 2007, and the second-highest-grossing film in the United States that year. In addition, it was the highest-grossing animated film of 2007, and the third-highest-grossing animated film ever, trailing only behind
Finding Nemo and
Shrek 2. The film sold an estimated 46,907,000 tickets in North America. The film was released in the United Kingdom on June 29, 2007, and topped the country's box office for the next two weekends, before being dethroned by
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Critical response Shrek the Third received mixed reviews. On
Rotten Tomatoes,
Shrek the Third has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of , making it the lowest-rated film in the
Shrek franchise by the website to date. The site's critical consensus reads, "
Shrek the Third has pop culture potshots galore, but at the expense of the heart, charm, and wit that made the first two
Shreks classics." On
Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, the lowest grade in the franchise. Some critics were confused as to the film's target demographic. Carina Chocano of the
Los Angeles Times felt themes about career and parenting anxieties, the lifestyle of celebrities, as well as its humor, would be above children: "Does a kids' movie really need, among other similar touches, a Hooters joke? I, for one, wouldn't want to have to explain it." Nonetheless, she also found certain moments to be funny: "Shrek's anxiety dream about procreating is fabulously surreal, and King Harold's deathbed scene, with its grimaces and false alarms, is pure kiddie comedy at its best." David Ansen of
Newsweek wrote that the film's "slightly snarky wit is aimed almost entirely at parents... this one never touched my heart or got under my skin. It's a movie at war with itself: a kiddie movie that doesn't really want to be one." Peter Bradshaw of
The Guardian gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, saying the film "wasn't awful, but it's bland, with a barrel-scraping averageness. There are no new ideas, no very funny new characters..." He called the character Merlin a "frankly unfunny new character" and considered the character to be a "
rip-off of
Albus Dumbledore from the
Harry Potter franchise". He stated that the film contained "no decent musical numbers, incidentally, and the one cover version is bizarrely chosen. For Harold's funeral, we get a rendering of ...
Paul McCartney's "
Live and Let Die". Er ... huh? Because it's kind of sad and it has "die" in the title?"
The Times of London rated it 2 out of 5.
A. O. Scott from
The New York Times described the film as "at once more energetic and more relaxed [than its predecessors], less desperate to prove its cleverness and therefore to some extent, smarter."
Awards and nominations ==Soundtrack==