Directed By: Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson
Starring: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz
Tag line: "The greatest fairy tale never told"
Trivia: Originally, Chris Farley was cast as the title character, and even recorded 80-90% of the dialog before dying unexpectedly in 1997
I first caught Shrek during its initial theatrical run, while my family and I were on vacation in Wildwood, New Jersey. Deciding against spending another afternoon on the beach, we instead drove into Cape May, and after doing a little shopping headed over to the Bayshore 8 theater (which isn’t there anymore) to check out a movie. Seeing as this would be our youngest son’s first experience watching a film on the big screen (he was two at the time), my wife and I settled on Shrek, and as we handed our tickets to the usher, he looked down at them and smiled.
“Keep an eye out for the ‘Muffin Man’ scene”, the usher told us. “It’s hilarious”.
He was right… it was. But then, most of Shrek made us laugh.
Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) is a very happy ogre. Aside from being one of the most feared creatures in the forest, he owns a prime bit of real estate (for an ogre, anyway): a messy swamp, complete with a mud bath and all the bugs he can eat. His happiness is threatened, however, when a slew of fairy tale creatures move into his domicile, having been banished there by Lord Farquard (John Lithgow), who threw them out of his kingdom. With a talkative donkey (Eddie Murphy) in tow, Shrek sets off for the kingdom of Duloc to try and get his swamp back, and once there, makes a deal with Lord Farquard: if Shrek rescues the Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), who’s locked away in a tower guarded by a fire-breathing dragon, Lord Farquard will give him the deed to his swamp. With Donkey’s help, Shrek manages to free the Princess, and heads back to Duloc to present her to Lord Farquard, who intends to marry her. On the way, however, the normally reclusive ogre develops feelings of his own for the beautiful princess (who, as it turns out, is hiding a pretty big secret of her own).
Produced by Dreamworks, Shrek plays out like a twisted fairy tale, with an ogre as the hero and a vertically challenged Prince the villain. More than this, though, it’s a marvelously inventive comedy, with wonderfully vibrant animation and some very endearing characters. Myers is spot-on as Shrek, sporting a Scottish accent that somehow fits the character to a “T” (a co-worker once told me that, while she was watching Shrek, she couldn’t stop thinking of Fat Bastard, yet another Scot portrayed by Myers in the Austin Powers series. Oddly enough, whenever I re-watch those movies, I now can’t stop thinking of Shrek). John Lithgow is at his maniacal best as Prince Farquard, who, despite being the heavy, never fails to bring a smile to our face (in the above-mentioned “Muffin Man” sequence, Lord Farquard is torturing a Gingerbread Man, trying to extract information). Diaz is also well-cast as the Princess, who proves to be much more interesting than your standard, run-of-the-mill animated royalty, but the one who made me laugh hardest was Eddie Murphy as Donkey, the motor-mouthed sidekick who, from the word “go”, is a thorn in Shrek’s side (one scene, in which he and Shrek are approaching the tower to rescue Fiona, had me giggling uncontrollably for about five minutes). Along with the guffaws, Shrek also provides a few genuinely touching moments, most dealing with the budding romance between Shrek and the Princess (a late montage, featuring Rufus Wainwright’s soulful rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, is particularly moving).
A film that actually gets funnier each time I watch it, Shrek ranks among my favorite animated movies of the 21st century, and I predict it’ll be on that list for many years to come.