Flak Magazine: Review of Shrek, 5-24-01

A fractured fairy tale for the 21st century, Shrek starts by dropping the ogre for which it's named into a property dispute; this leads to him rescuing a princess who only wants to be taken away from her dragon-guarded tower by a hero willing to play it by the book — the kiss, true love, yada yada yada. It's these digs at the archetypes perpetually reinforced by Disney that audiences are finding delicious, and even somewhat nourishing: It's a combination love and maturation story that doesn't turn (entirely) on trite, token characterizations. And its hip, not-just-for-kids sensibilties extend past the cynical, Princess Bride-eqsue digs at the fairy-tale form it itself inhabits. Its big, tender, star-cross'd love song? Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." Who sings over the get-to-know-one-another montage? The Eels.

The movie's like that — obligatory moments undercut by unconventional trappings, acid moments awash in sweetness. To Shrek's credit, these elements don't negate themselves or seemed tacked on; what greatness it has comes primarily from this synergy. And it's funny and charming to boot. Shrek is an easy movie to love, and as evidence, there's a forest of fawning reviews out there.

What's obscured by the lovefest, however, is how many flaws the movie has, and while I come not to bury Shrek but to praise it, its faults are worth articulating because you, like me, just may come out of the theater with an inarticulable sense that it could have been a little better, a little more fun.

Shrek is being hailed as a triumph in computer animation, and the facial expressions in particular are something to behold. But it can't get away from how computer-generated it looks, particularly in its textures and coloration. Pixar, the studio behind both Toy Story films and A Bug's Life, was savvy in its choice to deal mostly with manageable surfaces in its early films — the plastic of toys, the smooth exoskeletons of bugs. In Shrek, as in Antz (the previous outing served up by Dreamworks and animation studio PDI), the characters look like the most fantastic puppets, but that's a kind of left-handed compliment — Shrek's humans, for instance, look all Plasticine-y. (Poor PDI — in the same way that Antz's CG was trumped by A Bug's Life that same year, Shrek has to compete on a technical level with Square's stunning-in-the-previews work on this summer's Final Fantasy, which also features CG humans.) And, as with Antz, PDI has opted for a less bombastic color scheme than Pixar's candy-colored palette; Shrek's look may suggest "storybook," but the muted, low-contrast colors often work against all the kitchen-sink compositions the movie takes so much pride in.

Furthermore, what's with the voice talent? For a movie whose ad campaign for the longest time screamed nothing but "MYERS MURPHY DIAZ LITHGOW," those performances only hit about half the time. Shrek was originally supposed to have been voiced by Chris Farley; that would have been brilliant, and probably would have provided Farley with his best role. But Mike Myers is way anonymous as the ogre, and while it's more distracting than not to be focused on the actors behind the voices, it's hard to ignore that it sounds like Myers is phoning it in more than half the time. An additional $4 million was reportedly spent to re-record and re-synch the near-finished film when Myers decided he should re-inflect his performance with his light Scottish burr, and I don't get it; sure, a theme of the movie is that Shrek is more mild-mannered and less primal than people expect ogres to be, but that could be conveyed is a much less bland way than what Myers took two tries to achieve.

The capable-of-brilliance John Lithgow is fenced in here by typecasting as Humperdinckish cad Prince Farquaad, but he's not onscreen enough to seem stale. Eddie Murphy fares better as Donkey, the wise ass character; it's a glorified second-banana role, but Murphy brings some glory to it. He's always funny, but here it feels like he's serving the script more than the script is serving him — hardly an offense, but it prevents you from getting a sense that he was the hands-down only choice for the role. That compliment does apply to Diaz, however; I can't think of a time such a cover-girl actress has so eagerly sought out such glamour-smashing projects as this and Being John Malkovich. Diaz's Princess Fiona has even more spunk than Drew Barrymore in Ever After, and she of the whole cast seems to have caught the film's vibe the best.

So, yes: Shrek bears a few woulda-coulda scars, but it does well by a heritage that stretches from Monty Python to the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker parodies. What's most important, though, is that it has a ragged, noble heart beating in its chest, and that's a quality always worth seeking out during the summer season.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)