Shrek (2001)
Directed by Andrew Adamson
It ain't easy bein' green -- especially if you're a likable (albeit smelly) ogre named Shrek. On a mission to retrieve a gorgeous princess from the clutches of a fire-breathing dragon, Shrek teams up with an unlikely compatriot -- a wisecracking donkey.
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Yet at the same time, Shrek! also remains rife with elements borrowed from other less traditional fantasy films, softly resounding with themes and elements from classic films such as “The Princess Bride” and “The Never Ending Story.”
The way the story takes a funny angle on classic fairy tales reminds me a little of "The Princess Bride."
In the quirky, irreverent way that it views fairy tales and their conventions, it's not unlike The Princess Bride .
They've genericized an already simple plotline while heavily under the influence of William Goldman's "The Princess Bride."
Loosely based upon a story by children’s author William Steig (Sylvester and the Magic Pebble), Shrek is a satiric, updated fairy-tale love story, sort of like The Princess Bride , if André the Giant had been the hero, and had worn Lou Ferrigno body paint.
While the multiple directors (Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson) and writers seem to be aiming for a tone similar to the post-modern "The Princess Bride," "Shrek" flies in too many directions at once, particularly over its first half.
The film began life simply enough, as yet another of Jeffrey Katzenberg's "fuck you so hard" gestures to his old boss and nemesis Michael Eisner; their rivalry fueled the creation of the animation studio that Katzenberg had tried to use to out-Disney Disney, beginning with 1998's dramatic musical The Prince of Egypt , DreamWorks' second feature (their first, Antz from earlier in the same year was a more petulant but also lower-key "fuck you" to Disney's handmaidens at Pixar).
It began in 1998, when Disney released ''A Bug's Life'' and DreamWorks came out with ''Antz,'' two movies that were nearly identical in their looks and themes.
According to the press materials, “Shrek” avails itself of a DreamWorks “proprietary” facial animation system (first used in “Antz” ) that uses a layering process to build the image of a character’s face, starting with the skull and then gradually adding computer re-creations of muscles and skin.
The second computer-generated animated film from Dreamworks (with the first being the disappointing 1998 movie, "Antz"), "Shrek" is a dazzling display of creative artistry and sheer imagination.
The look of the film will be familiar to anyone who's seen the Toy Story movies, Antz or A Bug's Life, but Shrek does qualify as the first digitally animated movie to feature a large number of humans, who unfortunately still move with the stiffness of video game characters.
While computer animation has proven useful in rendering strange creatures in previous movies, such as Antz, it always seemed to falter when it came to portraying realistic humans.
It began in 1998, when Disney released ''A Bug's Life'' and DreamWorks came out with ''Antz,'' two movies that were nearly identical in their looks and themes.
The look of the film will be familiar to anyone who's seen the Toy Story movies, Antz or A Bug's Life, but Shrek does qualify as the first digitally animated movie to feature a large number of humans, who unfortunately still move with the stiffness of video game characters.
Here at least, if nowhere else, Shrek readily surpasses the Toy Story movies, as well as Antz (which it surpasses in other ways also) and Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (which is probably otherwise about its equal).
It also temporarily takes the mantle of best-looking, all-CGI animated feature, surpassing the likes of Toy Story and A Bug’s Life in the appearance category.
Although it reportedly makes technological advances in the art of computer animation, "Shrek" isn't nearly as visually pleasing as the Pixar/Disney collaborations (the "Toy Story" duo, "A Bug's Life").
In 1999 Katzenberg (now sitting pretty as the K in DreamWorks SKG, with new partners Steven Spielberg and David Geffen) won a long-in-the-courts $250 million suit against Disney for breach of contract, and just the year before that, the studios released dueling bug-movies, DreamWorks’s Ants and Disney’s A Bug’s Life.
Which makes "Shrek," if nothing else, an anti-Disney tale, which is precisely what DreamWorks had in mind (along with the "Toy Story" market share).
First, it's computer animated, so maybe comparing it to older, pre "Toy Story" Disney is a tad unfair.
When it comes to computer-generated motion pictures, Shrek has once more raised the bar - and this one was already at an impressively high level in the wake of Toy Story 2 and Dinosaur .
If it isn’t in the same instant-classic league as The Prince of Egypt — or that of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 from rival studio Disney/Pixar — well, not much is.
Computer generated cartoons have been getting more sophisticated since they became popular with Pixar's Toy Story, although they haven't necessarily gotten funnier.
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The clever script turns the Magic Mirror on the Wall into a "Dating Game" host, and features an unforgettable exchange between Lord Farquaad and the Gingerbread Man that suggests an encounter between Mother Goose and "Marathon Man."
The film began life simply enough, as yet another of Jeffrey Katzenberg's "fuck you so hard" gestures to his old boss and nemesis Michael Eisner; their rivalry fueled the creation of the animation studio that Katzenberg had tried to use to out-Disney Disney, beginning with 1998's dramatic musical The Prince of Egypt , DreamWorks' second feature (their first, Antz from earlier in the same year was a more petulant but also lower-key "fuck you" to Disney's handmaidens at Pixar).
Like DreamWorks’ previous animated efforts — including the more traditionally animated The Road to El Dorado and The Prince of Egypt as well as the computer-rendered Antz — Shrek is more adult in content than mainstream American animation has traditionally been.
Happily, the film taken on its own terms is nowhere near as broken as I've probably indicated so far: its biggest flaw as a movie is that it turns much too serious for its own good, though it otherwise is an entirely satisfying animated adventure story, one that would have given me pause were I a Disney exec (though it also does not suggest in any way the degree to which DreamWorks would begin stomping Disney following the release of Shrek in 2001).
When Lord Farquaad, for example, is deciding on a princess to marry, he is presented by the Mirror from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" with three contestants, a 'la "The Dating Game"--Cinderella, Snow White, and Fiona.
Loosely based on William Steig’s 1970 book, the film is filled with exciting action sequences and broad humor that will appeal to younger audiences, while adults will appreciate references to films as varied as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
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Three billion leaves were grown in a digital greenhouse, we are told, and the donkey fur could be made to “lie flat, overlap, and even swirl,” like Sylvester Stallone's chest muscles in his “Rocky” days.
What, just because Farquaad's kingdom is a theme park with turnstiles and his subjects include Pinocchio, Cinderella and Snow White?
Even a sweet-singing bluebird (resembling the one in Snow White) meets an untimely end.