There is a moment in “Shrek”
when the dreadful Lord Farquaad has the Gingerbread Man (Conrad Vernon) tortured
by dunking him into milk. This sets us up for another scene when Princess Fiona’s
singing voice is so painful it causes little bluebirds to combust. Making the
best of a bad thing that happened, she fries their eggs. This is not your
typical family animated film. “Shrek” is cheerful and evil, filled with clever
in-jokes and somehow has a core.
Roger Ebert stated in
his review, “The movie has been so long in the making at DreamWorks that the
late Chris Farley was originally intended to voice the jolly green ogre in the
title role. All that work has paid off: The movie is an astonishing visual
delight, with animation techniques that seem lifelike and fantastical, both at
once. No animated being has ever moved, breathed or had its skin crawl quite as
convincingly as Shrek, and yet the movie doesn't look like a reprocessed
version of the real world; it's all made up, right down to, or up to, Shrek's
trumpet-shaped ears.”
Shrek’s voice is now played by former SNL comedian Mike Myers, with a voice that sounds similar to
his morbidly obese Scotsman with a molasses enunciation in “Austin Powers” (a
trilogy that I refuse to watch). Shrek is an ogre who lives in a swamp
surrounded by “Keep Out” and “Beware the Ogre!” signs. Ebert noted, “He wants
only to be left alone, perhaps because he is not such an ogre after all but
merely a lonely creature with an inferiority complex because of his ugliness.”
He is shocked when the solitude of his swamp is filled by a sudden clutter of
cartoon creatures, who have been banished from Lord Farquaad’s kingdom.
Many of these creatures
have an interested association to Disney characters who are in the public
domain: The Three Little Pigs (Cody Cameron) show up, followed by the Three
Bears (Bobby Block), the Three Blind Mice (Simon J. Smith and Christopher Knights),
Tinkerbell, the Big Bad Wolf (Aron Warner) and Pinocchio (Cody Cameron). Later,
when Farquaad looks for a bride, the Magic Mirror (Chris Miller) gives him
three choices: Cinderella, Snow White (“She lives with seven men, but she’s not
easy”) and Princess Fiona. He chooses the beauty who has not had the main role
in a Disney animated movie. Ebert said, “No doubt all of this, and a little dig
at DisneyWorld, were inspired by feelings DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg
has nourished since his painful departure from Disney--but the elbow in the
ribs is more playful than serious. (Farquaad is said to be inspired by Disney
chief Michael Eisner, but I don't see a resemblance, and his short stature
corresponds not to the tall Eisner but, well, to the diminutive Katzenberg.)”
The story is about Lord Farquaad wanting to marry Princess Fiona, and his lack
of enthusiasm to kill the dragon that guards her from her men who try to rescue
her. He hires Shrek to try to rescue her, which Shrek is happy to do, giving
the hateful fairy-tale characters are banished and his swamp returned to its dull
solitude. On his mission, Shrek gets a donkey named the Donkey, whose successively
comments, voiced by Eddie Murphy, gives some of the movie’s best laughs. (The
trick isn’t that he talks, Shrek sees. “the trick is to get him to shut up.”)
Ebert said, “The expedition to the castle of the Princess involves a suspension
bridge above a flaming abyss, and the castle's interior is piled high with the
bones of the dragon's previous challengers. When Shrek and the Donkey get
inside, there are exuberant action scenes that whirl madly through interior
spaces, and revelations about the dragon no one could have guessed. And all
along the way, asides and puns, in-jokes and contemporary references, and
countless references to other movies.”
Voice-overs for
animated movies were once, except for the yearly Disney classic, fast jobs that
actors took if they were out of work. Now they are starring roles with huge
paychecks, and the ads for “Shrek” use huge names to top the names of Myers,
Murphy, Cameron Diaz (Fiona) and John Lithgow (Farquaad). Their voice
performances are perfect to the characters, although Myers’ obsession with his
Scottish inflection apparently have been toned down. Particularly, Murphy has
come out as a star of the voice-over movies.
Ebert noted, “Much will
be written about the movie's technical expertise, and indeed every summer seems
to bring another breakthrough on the animation front. After the
three-dimensional modeling and shading of "Toy Story," the even more
evolved "Toy Story 2," "A Bug's Life" and "Antz,"
and the amazing effects in "Dinosaur," "Shrek" unveils
creatures who have been designed from the inside out, so that their skin,
muscles and fat move upon their bones instead of seeming like a single unit.”
They aren’t “realistic,” but they’re strangely real. The drawing of the
locations and setting is equally perfect – not lifelike, but beyond that, in a
cheery, stylized way.
Still, all the skill in
the world would not have made “Shrek” work if the story hadn’t been fun and
Shrek so lovable. He is not beautiful but he isn’t as horrendous as he
thinks. He’s a guy we want as our friend, and he doesn’t scare us but beat our pity.
Ebert said, “He's so immensely likable that I suspect he may emerge as an
enduring character, populating sequels and spinoffs.” DreamWorks must have figured
out that they should turn “Shrek” into a franchise because one more was not
enough.
In the end, this is a
great animated movie that everyone should check out. Everyone will have an
uproarious time watching this. Eddie Murphy became very popular in voice-acting
after he did this movie. Although he already had done voice-work with “Mulan,” this
one really heightened his voice-acting career. Everything in this movie is just
great, and I know for a fact that everyone will fall in love with this.
Look out next week when
we look at the first sequel in “Shrek Month.”
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