Snot, Farts and Inter-Species Lurve
 Feb 4th, 2002
(Feb 5th, 2002)
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  peppersinclaire
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Review rated by 41 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
Apart from being a Nazi and having an ice-pop for a head, Walt Disney has a lot to answer for. Firstly, being responsible for some of the lamest, laziest, derivative pieces of non-imaginative animation in recent years (Tarzan, Atlantis). Secondly, making Pixar use Randy Newman songs in their movies. Thirdly, dumbing down for kids. Kids like farts, they like naughty words and they like big gross things that aren’t necessarily going to be cuddly all the time. The most telling factor of Disney’s weakness of late is that their most popular movies aren’t even MADE by them (the Toy Story flicks)! Someone’s being paying attention. That someone is Jeffrey Katzenberg, the K in Dreamworks SKG. Previously responsible for Antz, but don’t let that put you off, this movie is actually ENTERTAINING. Plus, Sly Stallone has no involvement. This is A Good Thing. ***THE PLOT***
Meet Shrek, why don’tcha? He’s a big green ogre who likes his space. After accidentally meeting a sarcastic talking donkey (bear with me…), his dinner is interrupted by a whole cadre of fairy tale beasties invading his home. Enraged, he sets out to find the man responsible for this invasion of his peace, Lord Farquaad (say it slowly… it’s rude…) and gets caught up in a quest to rescue the beautiful Princess Fiona from a tall, tall tower, guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. If only it were that simple…
* * * * *
It’s a fairly simple plot, but then this is based on a children’s book – and an award-winning one at that (by William Stein). The usual jazz about believing in yourself and finding that people can be nasty or nice, despite their appearance. Easy enough then, to think this is going to be a schmaltz-fest with twee songs and the like. Yes, there are songs. Yes, there are moments of sugar. The one thing that sets this apart from Toy Story 2 (vastly over-rated in my mind) and some of the recent Disney clag is that IT GETS NASTY. Not in a 1970’s Linda Lovelace way, that would be wrong. When we first encounter Shrek, he’s not the standard Disney protagonist – he wipes his a$$ on a fairytale story book, showers in swamp-filth and farts in a pool of water, complete with “whoops!” finger-to-mouth cheeky look. Disney films make *children* laugh (bewildering, isn’t it?). This has MORE than enough to keep adults entertained.
The story, whilst basic in nature, has many elements similar to those in Pixar features – fantastic creations living out real-life situations and nuances. With Toy Story it was self-identity, with A Bug’s Life it was, um, turning circus performers into warriors. Hmm. Shrek covers selfishness and self-image/vanity, to quite a moving effect (I’m a sucker for happy endings in kid’s movies). It certainly goes a lot further than Disney efforts in every sense, which leads to including quite a few digs at the house of mouse. Pinocchio, Snow White, Dumbo, they all come into the sights of the animators, with very funny results (as Shrek’s home becomes littered with fairytale cast-offs, the Seven Dwarves shove Snow White, resplendent
in her glass coffin, onto Shrek’s dining table. “Oh no!” he roars, “Dead broad off the table!”). Despite its edgier-than-Disney humour, what else does this have going for it? Well, the effects are far beyond those seen in other computer-animated features. Considering that Final Fantasy went for realism but bored the pants off everyone, it’s great to see as much effort put in to family entertainment. The backgrounds are spectacular, far more impressive than the slightly stylised ones in Pixar efforts. At times, this was quite the trompe d’oeil, with incredibly realistic trees, water, smoke and even fire, beating off all comers easier than a five-handed rent boy. There’s a tale I read recently that one filmmaker (the name escapes me) was so moved by a film as a child that he ran up to the cinema screen and touched it. This is definitely a touchable movie! It’s refreshing to watch something of this nature that is character driven rather than out to impress with token “flashy” moments.
Adding to this heightened realism is the camera work. With Final Fantasy, there was a lot of talking about being able to place the camera anywhere – this is a given. Of course you can do ANYTHING, it’s a computer! It’s ANIMATION! We already know how special that special effects can be, it’s what you DO with them. The makers chose to use typical camera moves that you see in everyday movies – Steadicam, crane shots, helicopter shots, whip-pans and zooms, along with some superb editing work. The voice acting was a bit of a downfall for me – Cameron Diaz is great as always, the character she plays being very similar in her mannerisms to her real life counterpart. Eddie Murphy walks all over the rest of the cast with his performance as Donkey. Scary really to think that Eddie’s best work in the last 10 years is as a cartoon sidekick... John Lithgow plays himself, as usual, funny enough but no great shakes. Worst of the bunch, frustratingly, is Shrek himself – Mike Myers. The role of Shrek was first going to be fleshed out by Chris Farley. He’s dead, which kinda put him out of the running. If only the casting directors had met with Jack Black, this could have been a more sympathetic character, but Myers is running on auto-pilot here, which is again being run by an auto-pilot, which in turn is being run by…get the idea? His part-Scottish, part Canadian twang is really dire. It felt like the voice of Shrek had been recorded by a completely different actor, whose performance was subsequently erased and re-dubbed by Myers. Crap.
The final cherry on this slightly-mangled cream cake of a movie is the music. Some was written for the piece, whilst other tracks were spliced in, making this far more contemporary than the nepotistic nature of Uncle Walt’s productions. The show kicks off with a typical medieval feel, which is swiftly replaced by Smash Mouth’s “All Star” (also featured on the Mystery Men OST – written specifically for it, actually!). There are also appearances from Joan Jett and the Proclaimers, with a brilliant sing-a-long to the Monkee’s “I’m A Believer”. It’s cool to hear so many styles of music permeating a kid’s film, especially the pumping techno-style during the rescue of the princess (this was originally going to be Spybreak! by the Propellerheads, as used in the “lobby” sequence of The Matrix). Still, this being overseen by SKG, there are going to be quite a few David Geffen related tunes in the mix. But what, I hear you cry, of the DVD extras? I’ll tell you!
***THE DVD EXTRAS*** ***The Menu System***
Fan-bloody-tastic! Featuring some score from the movie, you are faced with a line-up of the fairytale rejects from Shrek’s swamp, with Donkey bouncing incessantly around in the background, enthusing “pick me! Me! Me!” – this is funny for the first two times. With each selection comes a different animation from the main characters:
Music note – Donkey begins to fly, before taking you to the hilarious karaoke party (see below). Play movie – The three little pigs dash into Shrek’s commode to show you our feature presentation.
Scene index – the youngest of the three bears goes all tantrum-like, bemoaning the fact that “this menu is too small!” Special features – Pinocchio screams, “there’s no special features here!” before straying into Farquaad’s torture chamber…
Subtitles – The big bad wolf (still in Granny’s clothes) simply says “what?” and walks away, to a comfy chair. Audio – a fairy dashes into Princess Fiona’s tall tower boudoir, where she too would like to know ”what?” Hmm.
***Scene Index***
20 chapters over 5 screens, with simple acoustic guitar music playing softly in the background, and occasional appearances from the three bears, popping up from behind the scenes, which play on pieces of old paper stuck to trees. Very nice. ***Subtitles***
Available in English, Spanish or Portugese. You can also hear Shrek go about his business in these languages.
***Audio***
5.1 Dolby Digital for all three languages, as well as Catalan, which for some reason doesn’t feature in the list of languages in the Subtitles menu. ***Special Features***
I love this screen – the gingerbread man lays on a baking sheet, looking worried as you peruse the available extras. Choosing one makes his leg fall off, and he cries out. Leaving the menu makes him sit up and comment on his gumdrop buttons.
Anyhoo, from here you can choose the following: ***Commentary by directors Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, with producer Aron Warner***
Entertaining enough, as the trio begin their effort by humming along with the Dreamworks music. There is a little insight into the gestation of some big scenes, with influences from some films that you didn’t think would have been looked at in reference to kid’s entertainment. The folks get on well enough, as they chatter amongst each other, but there are some moments of a$$ kissing that seem inevitable in all commentaries nowadays. You get to learn which members of staff played which bit-parts (standard for computer-animated teams, apparently, check out a Pixar DVD to find out how many of the supporting players are Pixar staff). There’s the obligatory dry humour and the like, not bad but then again – not great either.
***DVD-ROM***
Lucky blighters with DVD drives in their PC (like me) can re-record Shrek scenes with their own dulcet tones. Unfortunately, the damn thing refused to work on my system, telling me time and again to reduced my video settings (True Colour 24 bit on a screen of 1024 x 768 resolution). I did, down to 16 bit true colour and 800 x 600 resolution. Still nothing. 265 colours? Nada. One sound kicking later, it still wasn’t working, and there was more smoke coming out of the monitor than before, so I left it alone. ***The Tech Of Shrek***
Bog-standard studio produced promo, with the usual clique of computer-heads sitting around explaining about wireframe, muscles and particle rendering. Fairly interesting, but only really notable for some of the cock-ups made by the animators during the rendering process, which are worth a gander. Still, not essential.
***Animation Interviews: “Meet The Press”***
Another promo featurette, but specially made with the three lead characters, Shrek, Donkey and Fiona, as if they were real life people. And animals. And, um… ogres. Yeeees… Short, but amusing for a couple of viewings. ***Production Notes***
Hardly worth flicking though, with all the information from “The Tech…” repeated in squinty-small text form. Nice story book layout though.
***International Dubbing Featurette***
Yet another studio produced clip, with casting details on the international dubbing voice artistes. “We try and capture the same attitude” speaks one honcho – I hate when executives use words like “cool” and “attitude”! This is less than inspiring, and about as informative as a slug teaching French. They can’t handle the past participles, you know. ***Shrek in the Karaoke Swamp Dance Party***
For those who didn’t find it by pressing the music note on the front screen, here it is again. This is a fantastically funny short, with the entire cast bursting into a “megamix” of tunes, complete with choreographed dance routines and brilliant jokes. Best of all is Donkey’s rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”, as the dragon shakes her boo-tay.
***Games***
Kids will lap them up with a spoon, at which point you should tell them not to put spoons in the DVD drive. In “Shrektacular Trivia” you get asked a few questions about the movie, with clips as a “reward”, and as punishment for getting them wrong – more clips from the movie. In “Character Morph”, you get to cut ‘n’ paste characters together – great for kids, dull as watching Handy Andy watch paint dry for adults. “Decorate The Gingerbread Man” – dress up the ginger one in many a guise, the funniest of which is “Hippy” (he even has a “herbal” cigarette in his confectionary mouth!). You can also read up on the Shrek Re-Voice studio here, but as I say, without a DVD ROM drive on your PC (not Mac compatible I’m afraid) AND an Internet connection, you’re up spit creek. ***Cast***
Gushing write-ups on the stars of the piece, skating over flops like Torvill and Dean. Slightly incomplete in so much as they don’t list EVERY film the stars were in, but nice background info.
***Filmmakers***
No less than 19 credits for the folks who worked on the feature, with varying levels of information and interest. Disturbing facts learned from flicking through this tripe? One of the screenwriters was responsible for the cat eating puppet-travesty Alf. One of the effects guys is still working, despite involvement with the Ahnuld Schwarzenegger dud “Eraser”. Oh, and there are folks on board who helped write the execrable Godzilla remake. Most disturbing of all – I actually read all of the 19 sections without vomiting blood. * * * * *
Overall, this is a lovingly produced DVD of a quality to rival the Disney output, though the standard of the features won’t set your world aflame. The movie itself is surprisingly funny (unlike this opinion), but lets itself down with some of the voice acting, and may be a tad scary for very small ankle-biters (the dragon sequence). This is, however, streets ahead of Pixar’s constantly more watery output, and is more sophisticated in its appeal to young un’s and old un’s alike. Well worth a look. Thanks for reading!
© P$ 2002 Rated Universal, despite use of the word “crap” (shocking!), which all you parents can have fun explaining to little Jimmy, age 3. Especially when he uses it to describe your taste in clothing.
Main vocal cast: Mike Myers – Shrek
Cameron Diaz – Princess Fiona
Eddie Murphy – Donkey
John Lithgow – Lord Farquaad
Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Links:
www.shrek.com - yer official site, with - you guessed it - plenty of Flash content. http://www.spielberg-dreamworks.com/shrek/ - fan site, with more green goodness than a lime jelly factory.
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19.10.2004 11:47
this review was very helpful to me
22.04.2002 23:39
Great Op, Brilliant film, but Mike Myers voice got a little annoying. - zoe30
08.02.2002 11:45
Great op. I love this film, but I disagree with you about Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. I found Murphy annoying and Mike Myers - well it didn't sound much like him.