Princess posse isn't passive

LOS ANGELES — In "Shrek the Third," Cameron Diaz's ogre bride shares tea time with the fairy-tale world's fairest princesses — Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel.

With Diaz's plump Fiona expecting a litter of tiny ogres with hubby Shrek, her old princess pals throw her a baby shower in the animated sequel. True to the Shrek world, these are not the well-behaved princesses of classic children's stories.

Snow White (voiced by Amy Poehler) is a haughty queen bee, Cinderella (Amy Sedaris) is an obsessive clean freak and Sleeping Beauty (Cheri Oteri) is a narcoleptic who's constantly nodding off. Rapunzel (Maya Rudolph) looks down on her royal cousins as if from a high tower and hides a terrible secret about her glorious hair.

After Prince Charming leads a coup, Fiona must teach her pampered friends — whose natural inclination is to assume passive positions and wait to be rescued — how to stand up for themselves.

Diaz and her princess posse sat down with The Associated Press to share their thoughts on the "Shrek" films, their favorite animated tales and why these modern damsels don't sit around waiting for men to rescue them.

AP: Can we assume you four newcomers were fans of the first two "Shrek" movies?

Sedaris: This is the first one I've seen.

Poehler: I loved them. It's so good to be able to see a film that you can watch with a kid and your grandparents. So many talented people are in it, and the tone of it, it's first-class all the way.

Oteri: I was amazed. It was written so well, it was so sophisticated, yet it was still very enchanting, like you remember when you were a kid when you watched the Disney films. It still had that old-fashioned kind of beauty to it.

Rudolph: There are so many great people involved in these movies that when you get a phone call to be involved, it's such a nice feeling. I get to be part of it, too? It's such a compliment, like, "We do this thing that's already great, and we'd like you to be a part of it."

AP: This seems like a female-empowerment or princess-empowerment film. What's that say about the old fairy-tale notion of, as the princesses say, "assume the position" and wait for some man to save them?

Sedaris: Sounds good to me now. It does.