Shrek, a contently solitary Ogre and the eponymous star of this years highest grossing movie, is not one to be trifled with. When the evil (aren't they all?) Lord Farquaad rounds up all the fairytale creatures in his domain Shrek's life is turned upside down when they are all dumped on his land. Angry at being forced to put up with a thousand weird, and hilariously familair, bunnies, pigs, witches etc. he sets off to see Farquaad with his new found 'friend' Donkey in tow. Selected for the dangerous mission of rescuing Princess Fiona for Farquaad he sees it as his only chance to regain his lonely existence and accepts what should be a suicide mission.
With Antz Dreamworks showed they could not only match but in fact surpass Disney in the animation stakes, something no one else had managed in nearly 65 years. Shrek is the eagerly awaited follow up to that success and carries on the fine traditions inherent in the genre of cutting edge animation and the welcome use of famous voices (in this case, Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy and John Lithgow). With these well-established traits, an excellent reverse-fairytale plotline and over $200 million taken in the US in under a month it concludes pretty concisely that Shrek is the front runner for the Summer stakes and a sure-fire critical success. Or is it?
While certainly a very well made film, the animation is absolutely top notch, and boasting top-rank voice talent in its ranks the film on the whole left me strangely cold. I didn't feel quite as swept up as I had with the likes of Toy Story 2 and Antz. The characters, bar the under-used fairytale creatures, were your run-of-the-mill animated heroes/villains. Shrek was all burly and calm under pressure, Donkey (voiced by the magnificent Murphy) was panicky and the traditional comic sidekick and the Princess was, well, completely predictable having inherited the by-now boring feminist ass-kicker role (thank you Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Lithgow though, as the scheming Lord Farquaad, is superb and lends exactly the right level of pathetic evil to his villainous character.
Farquaad's animated self is also a hoot, given that he is about 4 ft tall and very, very hairy. As I said before though it's the other characters which make cameo appearances which really steal the show and the one that stands out above all else for me is the Gingerbread man. Tortured by Farquaad to learn the location of other creatures he bravely holds himself together and leads the despot up the garden path. More of that throughout the fill wouldn't have gone amiss but as soon as Shrek and Donkey have set off we get to see precious little of anyone else.
The main problem though is Myers. It's not bad enough that he adopts his horrific Scottish accent to play Shrek (anyone who has seen Austin Powers 2 will know exactly what I mean) but he seems to lack good jokes. Murphy gets all the crackers and Myers ends up playing the straight man, something he just doesn't appear to be too comfortable with. Diaz, while playing the most realistic animated babe ever, is used as the emotional bait and bar one unnecessary The Matrix spoof is again given little to do.
Hats off to Dreamworks for producing another polished animated tale but it could have done with just a touch more fairytale-esque scripting and a little less pop psychology. An above-average entry to the genre but one aimed more for the kids than those of recent times. |
