Shrek

Kills (with laughter)

Features the voices of: Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow
Director:
Written: June '01
Take the "Fractured Fairy Tales" from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and combine it with cutting edge CGI, as Dreamworks SKG demoed in Antz and you have Shrek. Throw in some Disney nose-tweaking (more like nose-twisting), digs at Riverdance, Mary Poppins, Charles Dickens, Micheal Eisner (more Disney), The Matrix , the sterility of Disney theme parks (notice a pattern here?), and you have buku great jokes.

Story is simple. Lord Farquaad (Lithgow) wants all the enchanted people and critters out of his land, so he exhiles them to Shrek's (Mike Meyers) forest. Shrek ain't a people person, well OK, ogre, so he does Lithgow's bidding--rescue the Princess (Cameron Diaz). Along the way he picks up the donkey (Eddie Murphy) as a sidekick. Then there's the dragon. And the scene-stealing gingerbread man....

Shrek ends up proving himself to Farquaad by kicking all the knights' asses that Lord "Tall" puts against him. This scene is set to Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation" song, so you know we're serious here. I read that A Knight's Tale did the same thing with ananchronistic music and dialogue. That movie died at the box office while this one flies, so it goes to show you can only twist a genre so far before it snaps.

  • Mike Meyers as Shrek's voice must've been thought as "casting against type" because he sure is. His thin reedy voice is not one I imagine coming from a huge ogre with a bushel basket-sized head, monster mouth and shotglass-sized teeth. I'd've cast someone with Andre the Giant's timbre but Sean Connery's diction. Plus Meyer's voice wanders in and out of Scottish Brogue Land with startling regularity--whatever that was about. (Besides gutless direction.)
  • Cameron Diaz as the Princess meets the requirements--no more, no less.
  • John Lithgow as Lord Farquaad is well cast. His irritating voice drills into people's heads just what a "powerful" Prince he is. (Being rendered as a 40-inch tall pompous jerk adding to the effect.)
  • But the real star is Eddie Murphy as the donkey. He cut his animation teeth on Mulan playing a lizard ("EXCUSE ME! That's fire-breathing dragon!"), but here he belts one clear out of the park. His voice, that laugh, his totally assured use of inflection--they couldn't've cast anyone better and thankfully they didn't. Course those were words given to him by the writer, but what Murphy did with them is all Murphy's doing and he's simply terrific.

    Psychotic right-wing parents who're intolerant anyone who's not a member of their sect and despise "toilet humor" may want to think twice before their kids attend. Let's just say that Shrek has a "think outside the box" fishing method. And the donkey knows how to put out campfires. If you get my drift.

    Something is revealed halfway thru the flick so you know exactly where the movie is going and how it'll end, but it's still a great ride. Plus the Neil Diamond "I'm a Believer" song and dance ending is a great capper.

    Dreamworks has shown they're the masters of CGI animation. There are so many great bits that I bet you could see the movie twice and not catch them all. The quality of the CGI is stunning. For example, Shrek's ear is backlit by the Sun and you see light coming thru. That wouldn't happen unless it was programmed to happen, which goes to show the care that the animators put into the movie.

    Except for Meyers' voice, Shrek has it all.

    Movie's suitability for:

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