SHREK
by
Melissa B.
Cummings
If you want to be effective when making a pointed effort to mock
a certain genre of films within your film, it is really necessary for
your film to be significantly better than those you mock. Otherwise,
it just makes you seem childish. That is the major problem with Shrek,
Dreamworks SKG's latest foray into the Disney-dominated world of feature-length
animation.
Jeffrey
Katzenberg, who gained the majority of his fortune and fame from the
Walt Disney Company, has since spent a great deal of time at Dreamworks
doing his best to insult Disney and undermine their projects from behind
the scenes. Now he foregoes all subtlety by taking his disdain for Disney's
success center stage.
Shrek
tells the story of a homebody ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) who simply
wants to be left alone. When the king of the land (John Lithgow) banishes
all fairy-tale characters, they move to the forest where Shrek lives.
Annoyed by this, Shrek asks the king to do something about it. The king
(who isn't really a king yet) needs to marry a princess in order to
assume the throne, so he makes a deal with Shrek: bring the princess
Fiona (Cameron Diaz) back to the castle to marry him, and he'll get
the intruders out of Shrek's land. So begins the adventure.
One of the best things about Shrek is that it gets the majority
of the requisite poop, fart and burp jokes out of the way in the first
15 minutes. From then on, the story follows a relatively predictable
route, with Shrek rescuing the princess from the dragon's lair and escorting
her back to the kingdom. There are a few minor surprises along the way,
but never wanting to be too bold, the film mainly follows the basic
happily-ever-after formula.
The only area in which Shrek makes a strong statement is in
its overt mockery of the animated musical genre, for which Disney is
most famous. On several occasions, characters in the film break into
song, only to be told by other characters how annoying it is. The first
time this happens, it is amusing, but by the second and third time,
it gets really old.
The
other problem with this is that, although Shrek is not a conventional
musical, there is a soundtrack of modern music inserted into the film.
The majority of the songs have little or nothing to do with the scenes
they are in, and many seem simply to be space-filler. The song-and-dance
routine in the film's finale is much more drawn-out and pointless than
the similar ones at the ends of Mulan or Toy Story 2.
Unless the writers were going for the irony, the fact that Shrek's
soundtrack is equally as distracting as that of any full-fledged musical
only serves to negate the point they were trying to make.
Not
only does Shrek take shots at Disney by way of their propensity
for musicals, but also by mocking their theme parks and characters in
general. As with the music, the first time is funny, but it is belabored
to the point of tedium. And the thing that most undermines Shrek's
attempts at satire is the fact that it is overall no more creative or
original than any other recent animated feature, Disney or otherwise.
It follows many of the same formulaic conventions of characters (wisecracking
sidekick, evil king, beautiful yet sassy princess) and themes (hero
who is down on himself, heroine who learns that true beauty lies within)
of countless animated films.
There
are some humorous moments, mostly provided by Shrek's sidekick Donkey
(Eddie Murphy), and there are scenes where the animation is excellent
(especially when Shrek rescues Fiona from the dragon). However, Shrek
spends too much time mocking the films that it claims to be above without
ever actually rising above them, and that is a disappointment.
©2001 Melissa B. Cummings
CineScene
