Shrek Review
by "JONATHAN RICHARDS" (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)May 29th, 2001
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
SHREK
Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson
Voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy
De Vargas PG-13 90 min.
The pleasure of Shrek is in its gleeful naughtiness, like a kid at the dinner table doing disgusting things with food to make a mother throw her hands up in mock despair. The title character (adapted from the William Steig book of the same name) is an ogre who revels in revulsion. He bathes in muck, brushes his teeth in slime, and pulls wax out of his ears to make candles. And he wants nothing more than to be left alone.
He's not evil, of course. When the townspeople make their periodic forays with flaming torches into his swamp to slay or capture him, he scares them off good-naturedly, but he doesn't hurt them.
But things take an unacceptable turn when Shrek's swamp suddenly fills up with refugees - Pinocchio, the Seven Dwarfs, the Three Little Pigs, and a bunch of other fairytale creatures who have been exiled by Lord Farquaad (voice of John Lithgow), a pint-sized aristocrat so nasty he tortures the Gingerbread Man by dunking him in milk. Shrek (Mike Myers doing his Fat Bastard brogue from Austin Powers) demands that the unwelcome intruders be removed, and Farquaad agrees on the condition that Shrek go fetch him a princess bride (Cameron Diaz), who is being held captive in a castle in a distant kingdom by a dragon. Accompanied, much against his wishes, by his trusty sidekick Donkey (Eddie Murphy), he sets out to perform the feat and win back his lonely peace of mind. And before it's all over, adventures have been had and lessons have been learned.
The story is fun on its primary level, helped mightily by the improvisational vocal antics of Eddie Murphy, whose ingratiating Donkey rattles on non-stop as he tags along with the reluctant ogre. It's a character not unlike the little dragon he voiced in Disney's Mulan, and here the Dreamworks people poke a bit of fun at that by having the big dragon who's guarding the princess fall for Donkey.
In fact, the Dreamworks people have lots of fun at Disney's expense, providing another level of enjoyment for the grown-ups who take the kids to see this one. The displaced characters who invade the swamp are clearly refugees from the Land of the Mouse, there is a brief send-up of Disneyland's maddening Small Small World attraction, and the nasty Lord Farquaad is said to bear a resemblance to Michael Eisner, head of Disney and nemesis of Shrek producer and Dreamworks chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was once Crown Prince of the Magic Kingdom before he and Eisner had a falling out and he was banished under a dark cloud. (Eisner, however, is tall, and Katzenberg is short, so the diminutive Farquaad may be directing a wink at his own boss.)
The writing is clever, although not quite up to Toy Story standards, and the animation is accomplished, although personally I miss the old style in which drawing was king. These characters look like Play-Doh with bone structure; they occupy some uneasy territory between cartoon and real. What they really remind me of is those old Viewmaster slides, where you would click your way through a story on a disc held in a red plastic viewer. But the effects are wonderful, and the story is nicely acerbic, and there are none of those treacly Disney songs -- when Donkey tries to sing the ogre will only let him hum. That alone is worth the price of admission.
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