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This is one of those movies they make on those things called computers. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, you’re using one right now. But the fact of the matter is that Pixar/Disney have yet to make a movie that is as good as this. Don’t get me wrong, I love “Toy Story” and “A Bug’s Life”, but redundancy is present when you watch them within a short frame of time. “Shrek” not only made me laugh hard enough to see it more than once, it has one of the best children’s stories that you’re likely to see in the coming months.
Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) is a large, scary, green ogre that presides in the swamp by himself, in a house by himself, and lives life by himself. But that’s how he wants it. All that changes when a group of men try to fight him off his own land. This encounter leads to a scene that is so funny that I dare not tell you a single thing about it.
Long story short, a talking donkey coincidently named Donkey (Eddie Murphy) runs into Shrek and finds himself entranced by the ogre’s personality. The irony? Shrek’s personality is that of a small child who is teething. That leads to this, and this leads to that, and both Shrek and Donkey finds themselves on a quest to rescue the lovely Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from the highest room of the tallest and take her back to the sneaky, cunning, and pint-sized Lord Farquad (John Lithgow) at his magnificent and gargantuan castle. When Donkey admires its sheer size, Shrek comments on it, “Do you think maybe he’s compensating for something?”
What I found here is a film that is great for kids because of the whole fairy tale story and the colorful animation, but it’s great for adults. The brilliant thing is that when “Shrek” gets too, let’s say, dirty, it is so subtle and delicate that the young ones won’t know what has happened or why anyone is laughing.
This is something that spoofs nearly every fairy tale story and character imaginable – but does it both intelligently and with respect to those stories. In fact, “Shrek” is a fairy tale for the new century – one that quite powerfully states that beauty is on the inside. And this is one of the flat out best films of 2001. ****