|
|
|
Dreamworks SKG is a relatively new movie studio. One of their earlier releases was The Peacemaker, starring George Clooney. Since then, they’ve released better movies, such as Gladiator and American Beauty. Their animation division is lead by Jeffrey Katzenberg (the K of SKG), who used to work for Disney. Shrek is their second CG movie—their first was Antz. Does Shrek hold up against Disney’s animated feature films? Shrek is about an ogre (Mike Myers) who likes to live alone. Things get more complicated when a zillion fairy-tale creatures are dumped into his swamp. After meeting a donkey (Eddie Murphy), the two decide to travel and meet the guy who dumped these creatures. The guy (John Lithgow) gives them a quest: Shrek will get his swamp back if they rescue the princess (Cameron Diaz) who the guy wants to marry. Shrek is definitely more enjoyable than anything Disney has released in recent memory (Tarzan, Emperor’s New Groove, Mulan)—the enjoyable Toy Story movies were done by Pixar and released by Disney. Most of the humor seems to be aimed at adults and not kids—especially lines by Mike Myers. One of the jokes involves him looking at a large castle and commenting to Eddie Murphy, “They say he has a large castle to compensate for something…” Most of Eddie Murphys’s jokes are much funnier, as well as less annoying than the voice-work he did as Mushu in Mulan, than Myers’, although he manages to sneak in some adult humor in there as well. A lot of this movie is Disney bashing and is done well, especially a part that makes fun of “It’s A Small World After All.” The plot is OK, although the ending is predictable. John Lightgow does a good job as the villain, but the villain is never really threatening—only appearing at the beginning and the end of the movie. Cameron Diaz is fine as the romantic interest, although she really doesn’t have much to work with. The part that annoyed me the most about Shrek was the use of music. True, Eddie Murphy sings clips from a few annoying songs that works. There are a few insane, yet funny, short musical numbers in the film. For some reason, there are a lot of pop songs in the soundtrack. Similar to my complaint with A Knight’s Tale, the pop songs do not work here. Shrek opens with the song “Allstar” by Smashmouth… The song has nothing to do with what’s going on, and they play the entire song. This is done a few times throughout the entire movie and becomes quite irritating… The CG in this movie is pretty good, most of the time. In some scenes, specifically a sequence where Myers and Murphy are crossing a bridge over some lava, the characters look pasted onto the background and it comes off as a bit fake. The human faces look pretty detailed, although I think the human faces look even better in the previews for the Final Fantasy movie that’s coming out later this summer… Shrek is rated PG, although I really can’t think why. It’s definitely more of a smart-ass sense of humor than what pervades most Disney films… I think Shrek will make a lot of money its opening weekend. Disney has reason to be scared… With Shrek competing against their upcoming cartoon, Atlantis (a sci-fi/action cartoon), it will be interesting to see which makes more money. A few years ago, Fox’s Titan A.E. was a sci-fi/action cartoon rated PG [as is Atlantis], and it barely made $20 million dollars in the US box office—when it cost at least $80 million to make! Also, later this summer, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is coming out—which features the most realistic looking CG I’ve ever seen! I give Shrek *** out of ****. |