Shrek

Rating:
Summary: "I like that boulder. That is a nice boulder!"
Review: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson's "Shrek" strives to be something unique but winds up being just another routine animated production. While employing a darker tone than the usual run-of-the-mill Disney film, it has an unfortunate habit of pulling its punches just when you are expecting it to score a knockout.

Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) is an ogre who treasures his privacy. However, his peaceful existence is disrupted when wave after wave of fairy-tale refugees start to arrive at his front door. It turns out that Lord Farquaad of Duloc (voiced by John Lithgow) has banished them from his kingdom. When Shrek attempts to resolve the problem, he finds himself being asked to slay a dragon that stands between Princess Fiona (voiced by Cameron Diaz) and those that seek her hand in marriage. Before all is said and done, Shrek discovers that there is more to the princess than her appearance would suggest.

Mike Myers commendably brings to life the green ogre. However, the film's screenplay is not up to par with his efforts and disappointingly turns out to be the same type of routine bare-bones storytelling that characterized animated television shows from decades past. When "Shrek" does try to be more modern by throwing in an occasional clever pop-culture joke or by engaging in pointed satire, it resorts to something that we have already seen before. There is little originality present here - just variations on material previously done. Myers, Diaz, Lithgow, and Eddie Murphy do their best to make something out of the material handed to them but in the end "Shrek" can't shake off its "been-there-done-that" feel.


Rating:
Summary: Comment on the film's "morals"
Review: This isn't so much a review as a comment on some complaints on "morals" in the movie. One reviewer said that since the moral of the movie is bascially "don't judge a book by it's cover" Shrek shouldn't be making fun of Farquaads height. This is a fair point, and I can see why some might object. However in the DVD if you play the "Filmmakers commentry" Vicky Jenson makes the remark that

"We're not disaparaging short people. Farquaad has issues. He just can't recognize that of everyone he's kicking out,he would consider himself part of them, but he's got blinders. It's his own form of denial"

So you could argue that Farquaad is initially guilty of the hypocrisy. And since Farquaad sends Shrek on a quest to rescue a Princess so that he can have his swamp back which Farquaad populated with creatures initially, I think Shrek is entitled to some bitterness!



One reviewers commented that Shrek is an allegory for Americas foreign policy, where Shrek represents America, and the dragon symbolises the atomic bomb. Shrek plays the role of world policeman, like America. The "vandalism" scene in the church supposedly represents Americas centuries-old hatred of Catholicism. Well,
if you stare at flower design wallpaper long enough you can pick out certain patterns that can represent rudimentary human faces. The designers of the wallpaper sure didn't mean there to be but if the will's there, you'll see what you want to see. My point is that you could find some kind of pseudo allegory in any movie if you look long enough, regardless if the makers meant there to be any. What next, the shark in Jaws representing the threat of Communist Russia in the mid 70s?

Some complain of the crude humour. I don't care really. I watch Red Dwarf because it can be both intelligent and potty mouthed. It's the contrast between the two styles that I like. If everything was all intelligent, witty, charming and adorable in Shrek, it would be like candy floss. Appealing initially, but soon to overdose on the charming and become tiresome and sickly. And vice versa. That's just my opinion, and if others disagree then I won't argue. It's not about right and wrong, but about personal taste. The potty humpour to me is about being irreverent, not just grossing out for it's own sake. It's Dreamworks The Rolling Stones to Disney's The Beatles. (Hey, I like The Beatles more than Stones in general, but theres nothing wrong with taking a different approach!)

And finally the exploding bird scene, where some said that children cried in the cinema where they saw it. That scene is something that Monty Python might have used. Funny to some, but not to others. It's intentional bad taste. In my view that's the only scene that might warrant the "Parental Guidance" That's the only scene I personally have a problem with.

But frankly I don't watch Shrek for the "morals". It's effective on diffeent levels, and I enjoy it for the laugh out loud humour and the visual feast of it's graphics.