Belated Shrek thoughts

[Craig Crumpton]

Gotta write this somewheres...

Shrek's popularity caught me by surprise. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't nearly as funny to me as "Emperor's New Groove" was (Groove had a better story, voice cast, and more likable characters too). The lack of an orchestral soundtrack really bothered me - I didn't care at all for the pop and oldies music used. It was distracting.

And Shrek's really thin on plot. It's like they came up with all these very funny vignettes, and then tried to come up with something to link them all together somehow. It's got strong Points A, B and C, but there's nothing to bridge the gaps between them. Like it's missing pages of script. Like driving your car from home to work and not knowing how you got there. You know what I'm saying?

And I wasn't that impressed with the voice acting either. I'm not saying it was bad - it's was pretty good, in fact. But there was nothing new from either Myers or Murphy that we hadn't heard before. Cameron Diaz was... well, Cameron Diaz. John Lithgow's performance was outstanding, but again, he was being John Lithgow.

Overall, I didn't think it was *that* great. Some really funny scenes, but so loosely held together. The lack of a score bothered me more than anything.

I think Shrek's phenomenal success can only be attributed to its arrival at the box office - it was perfect timing. There weren't any fun family movies to compete with it (Spy Kids had already been out for a while and interest in Pokemon is rapidly deteriorating), and kids were out of school with no big movie to celebrate it. All the other studios were holding out for the big summer movies.

Shrek's success makes me a little uneasy, because it causes studios to make the mistake in believing that audiences want more CG and they'll completely abandon traditional animation and dump all their money into developing all-CG features. Then they'll arrive at the box office with too much competition from family-friendly live-action fare and get crushed. Then everything goes into salvage. They dump CG and complain again that audiences don't want to see animated films, and then we get more mediocre cartoon-to-live-action movies like "The Adv of Rocky & Bullwinkle" and "George of the Jungle". Meanwhile, the animation biz gets the shaft and fans like us go into withdrawal.

It's all so obvious to me - why can't studio CEOs see it?

As for comments on the actual movie, I liked all the gags at Disney's expense, particularly the theme park and "It's A Small World" parody, and Fiona's musical battle with the bird (nice Snow White spoof). And as with most who have seen it (including the cast members who've commented), my favorite scene is the Gingerbread Man interrogation. The musical number involing Robin Hood's merry men was also outrageously funny (especially the "West Side Story" finger-snapping gag. I wish the other fairy tale creatures had been more involved too - they were funnier at times than the lead characters.

There are lots of really funny moments, but the transitions between them are very weak, and so little plot tie it all together. And then there's the whole disctracting background music thing.

Anyway, so I'm curious to know if I'm the only one who has these opinions, since it's getting such rave reviews and bandwagon supporters, or do any of you feel the same way?

[Joe Tully]

Personally, Shrek actually makes me feel hopeful. After the success of Shrek and the Toy Story movies, and the recent trend of poorly-performing Disney movies, it makes me think that maybe we will see more animation that is made for adults as well as kids. But yes, I expect to see an increase in CG, but that doesn't necessarily mean a decrease in regular animation. Heck, this could mean an increase in animation in general, which would be great. We'll have to wait and see, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the best.

[Sharklady]

I finally got around to seeing 'Shrek' last Firday, and I concur: the individual moments are better than the movie as a whole. But IMO, there's a suffcient number of those moments to make the thing worth viewing.
I especially appreciated all those clever digs at fairy-tale conventions in general, and Disney's version of 'em in particular (I really like Disney animations, but they do have aspects which are worthy of satirization.) Plus, that 'Matrix' takeoff was a howler! Reason enough for me to advise any cartoon fan to give 'Shrek' a look. So long as you're prepared to focus on the moments, you'll probably have a reasonably good time.

[Craig Marinaro]

Nope, I pretty much agree with you totally. TENG was eons funnier. For one thing, TENG has genuine situation comedy, funny lines, funny characters, funny scenes, etc. Shrek's humor was based almost entirely on parody and grossout gags and meanspirited humor.

Which isn't necessarily *BAD*--I enjoyed most of the parody and a good deal of the mean-spiritedness enough, admittedly (the grossout stuff is another matter--yech). As you said, we've seen all the characters before--the key thing this film had going for it in the way of originaility is that it's one of the first so-called kiddie films I've ever seen that's basically just subversive humor the whole way through, with almost no underlying message or morals or feel-good scenes. Even the few scenes that do get at a bit more conventional have some underlying parody of something.

Which is fine for this one film--I did enjoy it quite a lot. I do hope it doesn't become a trend, though. Loved the zillions of D*sney jabs (this *MUST* be a record number of D*sney parodies in one place--Katzenberg must still be a little disgruntled about his days at the Mouse House ;). Other highlights, as you mentioned, were the Gingerbread Man interrogation scene (dunking him in milk...it's so sick, but...hee hee hee); the Monty Python-esque Merry Men showstopper (and the subsequent fight scene, with the princess doing a Matrix parody that, unlike several recent Simpsons efforts at such, was actually funny); the Beauty & the Best bit near the end; the Three Little Pigs breakdancing; and lots of other stuff.

And yes, the soundtrack bothered me too. I wouldn't have minded quite as much if I didn't despise nearly every song used. But anyhoo.

As I've made no secret of, I wasn't overly fond of the gushy, overblown styles of films like Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But on the other hand, I would hate to see overly cold, cynical films like this become the mainstream in children's entertainment.

I loved TENG. Of course, I don't expect every D*sney film to be like that (or even most--or even more than this one). That's not the sort of film their studio does. But I am grateful to them for doing it this once--that was the most I'd enjoyed one of their films in years.

Maybe Atlantis will topple that, if it's as daring as everyone's saying it is. We'll have to find out, won't we?

-C
And the "donkey" / "ass" jokes got a bit old after two or three times...

[The Mad Hatter]

While I liked Shrek a lot, I've got a lot of mixed feelings about it. First off, yes, the story was pretty weak, and I didn't get into the characters as much as I did in TENG.

I liked most of the "subversive" humor in there. True, they used "ass" a few too many times, but the whole thing wasn't quite as mean-spirited as I feared. Shrek's success in light of this gives me hope and makes me worry at the same time. The hope: maybe animation will finally manage to shake the stupid bias of Americans that every single bit of it is just for kids. Damn, that chaps my hide every time something mature is labelled by critics as an abhorration. The worry: this will spawn a lot of bad imitators who think that the more pop culture references and mean-spiritedness you cram in, the better it is (a la Family Guy).

The music I didn't really mind at all. I liked most of the songs, and I know that the filmmakers were trying to go in a completely different direction than the usual Disney musical, so I could appreciate that. (Interesting side note... for Lilo and Stitch, Disney's next effort after Atlantis, Disney has licensed the use of seven Elvis songs. Hmmmmm.)

But I've got to say that I still hate the CGI style... Toy Story did it a lot better. This leads me to another worry... that people will assume that CGI is "inherently cool," and produce a hell of a lot of crap while leaving cel animation in the dust. Don't believe me? Check out this sentence from a review of Atlantis in Entertainment Weekly...

Has my eye, seduced by the devious and tactile delights of ''Shrek,'' already evolved in tandem with the technological leaps in computer animation?

Argh. Just because something is technologically advanced doesn't mean that it's got a better style! Again, Shrek looked shoddy. And while Toy Story looked great, it doesn't replace cel animation... it's just something new and different. Furthermore, it seems a lot of people aren't even noticing that computer animation has lead to great effects in cel movies (The Iron Giant, the props in TENG). But maybe they blend in so well that people don't notice and won't give them credit for integrating them.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Owen's an idiot when it comes to critiquing animated films. He goes for flash above all else.