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In April, Film School Rejects will once again send our crack staff of NY-based critics (we call them “the cool ones”) over to the neighborhood known as Tribeca to cover the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. There, they will be delighted with a wonderful slate of uniquely artful and uniquely New Yorky films. And Shrek Forever After.

Tribeca announced on their festival blog today the the Dreamworks Animation film would open up the festival on April 21, following in the footsteps of films like Woody Allen’s Whatever Works and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. It continues Tribeca’s trend of completely uninspired opening night selections, many of which seem to be meant not as pieces of their overall slate, but as audience-grabbing headliners. It shows a lack of confidence in an otherwise smaller film, something that now Tribeca chief Geoff Gilmore showed last year, in his final year atop Sundance, when he premiered Mary and Max. Now in NYC, Gilmore is continuing the lame-duck trend of Tribeca by bowing not only to kiddy fair, but to a 3D spectacle opening. I’m not saying that Shrek Forever After won’t be a good movie, but I refuse to accept the fact that there wasn’t something better for opening night. This is Tribeca, after all.