Remember when the writers of your favorite sitcom would plainly run out of ideas and construct an entire episode around some weird gimmick. "What if we had never met?" "What if I had never been born?" Apparently it can happen in movie franchises too. USA Today has a first look today at Shrek Forever After, and it turns out that the green ogre's last film-- hopefully!-- will be more like It's A Wonderful Life In Far Far Away.

As explained by director Mike Mitchell, the film opens with Shrek having lost everything that used to make him scary-- his roar."It used to send villagers running away in terror. Now they run to him and ask him to sign their pitchforks and torches." Shrek teams up with Rumpelstiltskin in a deal that goes awry, and he winds up see what the world would look like without him-- Donkey is pushing a cart, Puss in Boots has grown fat and lazy, and Rumpelstiltskin is running everything.

New voices in the cast include Kathy Griffin and Flight of the Conchords darling Kristen Schaal as ogre-hunting witches, and Jon Hamm as, naturally, the most handsome ogre you've ever seen. All that voice casting sounds well and good, but there's no getting around the tired idea at the center of this, and the fact that it might have been better to leave Shrek well enough alone. At least they're promising this is the last one.