My Favourite Movies: Shrek

As my regular readers will know I’m a sucker for animated CGI movies. So when Shrek came out in 2001 it was a must see – especially after seeing the trailer which looked both amazing and lots of fun. Of course watching it again this weekend showed just how far CGI has come in the last 12 years! It honestly looked crude and rather primitive – I remembered being impressed by the movement of planets, grass and flowers at the time but not so much now. Everything was too smooth (except for the movement of the characters which seemed a bit jerky at times) and too artificial despite the obvious effort they made and the pride they took in their work. It’s basically a victim of technology – things have just moved on.

Luckily the film doesn’t rely on its CGI techniques – great as they were back then. The brilliance of Shrek is in the story and the acting. The CGI is just icing on the cake. The writers obviously had two main ideas – turn the standard fairy tale on its head and take the piss out of Disney at every opportunity. Both worked brilliantly and hilariously. One the face of it the story is a standard knight rescues princess, falls in love, lives happily ever after kind of thing. Except that the knight in an ogre (voiced by Mike Myers in a strange Scottish accent for some reason) who just wants to be left alone in his swamp and his trusty side-kick is a magical talking donkey (voiced hilariously by Eddie Murphy) who just won’t shut up or take no for an answer. The princess (voiced by Cameron Diaz) has grown up on too many fairy stories and is determined that Shrek should follow the script she’s devised whilst covering up the fact that she has a witches curse on her that can only be lifted with loves first kiss. The fire breathing dragon holding the princess hostage turns out to be a lonely female dragon who takes an immediate liking to Donkey causing the inevitable romantic complicated misunderstandings – but is, nevertheless very cute indeed for a dragon. At the centre of everything is Lord Farquaad (voiced by John Lithgow) who wants to be King of a magic-free kingdom which looks a whole lot like Disneyland!

There are many highlights in this movie: the Gingerbread torture screen, the escape from the dragon, the Matrix-like princess fight scene, and the scene where the princess and a blue bird compete for the high note! This is a film that’s both very clever and very funny with enough multi-levelled humour to keep both kids and adults rolling in the aisles. I remember laughing so much I honestly think I was crying several times during the film. It’s just looking that I wasn’t slurping coke at the same time – it could have got rather messy. I think this one broke the mould and allowed CGI movies to be adult and irreverent and not just cutesy and vacuous. That certainly made it easier on the parents who had to sit through previous kids cartoon movies by giving them something to laugh along with too. I’m sure that you would have probably seen this before but maybe it’s time to dust off the old DVD and watch it again? Enjoy.