Film
Shrek
- Director
- Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson
- Certificate
- U
- Running Time
- 89 mins
Adapted from the children’s book by William Steig, this 2001 DreamWorks animation is a proper fairytale adventure of the variety that Tinseltown hadn’t pulled off successfully since The Princess Bride. It’s filled with fabulous creatures, boasts an involving dramatic quest, and – best of all – doesn’t skimp on the Grimm-style nastiness and black humour that children adore but is so frequently airbrushed away by their stern, self-appointed protectors. Shrek, voiced by Mike Myers with his Fat Bastard Scottish accent (it’s weird, but it works), is a big, green, sad-faced, trumpet-eared ogre who lives alone in a swamp nursing an inferiority complex about his unorthodox looks. But then pint-sized potentate Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) decides to banish all the fairytale characters from his kingdom. Soon Shrek’s muddy idyll is invaded by hordes of blind mice, little piggies, a big bad wolf, a wooden-nosed boy . . . oh, and a wise-cracking, cowardly donkey (Eddie Murphy). Indignant Shrek remonstrates with Farquaad after laying waste to his army and is offered a deal: peace and quiet in return for saving the lovely Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from the mandatory fire-breathing dragon.
OK, so this is essentially yet another lecture on inner beauty from the world’s most looks-obsessed entertainment industry, but if you’re prepared to ignore that little irony you’ll find that’s its also sharply paced, brilliantly characterised, and superbly computer animated, with a terrific sense of fun. There are loads of fart, bottom and earwax gags for the young and, erm, young-at-heart, while adults are certain to enjoy all the parodies, in-jokes, attention to incidental detail and occasionally risque dialogue. (When Farquaad’s talking mirror offers him a selection of potential princess brides, Blind Date style, Snow White is described thus: “Although she lives with seven other men, she isn’t easy.”) The film also slyly subverts Disney fairytale convention. In one of the funniest sequences, Princess Fiona breaks into song with a cute little birdy, which hardly prepares you for what happens next. Murphy’s jive-talkin’ “dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden” and Myers’ exasperated, lovelorn ogre make a great double-act of whom we inevitably saw a great deal more, and the whole thing races by so enjoyably that you hardly have time to reflect on how much funnier Murphy had become in animated form than in the flesh.
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