Oh, Grow Up Already

These questions ran through my mind as I watched the new "Shrek" and "Paprika." "Shrek the Third" is, like the first two, relentlessly clever and inventive. It had me laughing at the get-go, when the obnoxious villain, Prince Charming, is seen re-enacting his mythic deeds to the jeers of a dinner-theater audience. But its slightly snarky wit (banner in a medieval high school: JUST SAY NAY) is aimed almost entirely at parents, and it wears out its welcome. Where the first "Shrek" left me elated, 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. Why would little ones identify with Shrek's new panic about impending fatherhood? This is a very skillfully made corporate product, but I wonder who, exactly, will be fully satisfied.

The stunning sci-fi mind-bender "Paprika," on the other hand, is far too unsettling and dense for children (and may prove too challenging for some adults, too). Kon, who made the one-of-a-kind "Millennium Actress" and "Tokyo Godfathers," may be the most exciting Japanese animator since Miyazaki. "Paprika" is part detective story, part thriller, part surrealist fantasia and a meditation on how we live out our subconscious lives through dreams, the Internet and movies themselves. The plot centers on a machine that allows psychotherapists to enter, and alter, the dreams of their patients. But when a prototype of this new invention, called the DC Mini, is stolen, havoc ensues: dreams collide and overtake the dreamer; the barrier between reality and nightmare is torn.

"Paprika" takes its name from the "dream detective" who is the alter ego of the research psychotherapist Dr. Atsuko Chiba. She's the shrink's emissary into her patients' unconscious, and now she must voyage into the unknown to discover who stole the DC Mini, and to save the world from going mad. "Paprika" is so packed with ideas and visual fireworks, it requires more than one viewing. It expands your notion of what animation can achieve. You wake from it as if from a dream: spooked, provoked and exhilarated.

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