Opinion

Shrek

Swamp-dwelling ogre Shrek unexpectedly finds his home invaded by fairytale creatures displaced by the mad Lord Farquaad. In an effort to regain his privacy, Shrek is forced to undertake a quest to rescue Princess Fiona from her dragon-guarded imprisonment and return her to marry Farquaad and clinch his control of the kingdom. Along the way, surprising revelations are made, and true love blossoms in unexpected ways.

It's a bit of a sad indictment of Shrek that I spent pretty much the whole film wondering why Mike Myers decided to play Shrek as a Scot…. It's not like there aren't Scottish actors who could have played the part, and if the aim was to play off his name, why not use his own voice…..? It was an annoying note in an otherwise enjoyable hour and a half.

I went into Shrek expecting it to be funnier than it actually is: the expected laugh-out-loud humour was actually more like gentle comedy in most places, though the gruesome opening sequence of Shrek about the house, the fantastic Fiona combat scene (done as a crazy combination of kung-fu movie action and Buffy-esque little-girl-beats-up-gang-of-men effects), and some of Eddie Murphy's sequences as Donkey *are* riotous. The rest of the film is still funny, and many of the sequences are brilliantly put together, including a wrestling match between Shrek and a group of guards, and the initial scene of Farquaad torturing The Gingerbread Man.

Technically, the animation is amazing - the facial work especially is fantastic (though 'monster' faces still work better than human ones), and has received much praise, but also noteworthy are many of the shots of buildings, particularly those of Farquaad's Disney-like Magic Kingdom of Duloc, which manage to look photographic throughout.

I can't make up my mind what I really thought of Shrek overall - on the one hand, it's certainly an entertaining film, but its own (and other people's, to be fair) pre-publicity led me to expect both a laugh-riot and a highly satirical take on the Disney juggernaut, and what I saw didn't really seem to be either of those things. It's certainly not a *bad* way to spend an evening, so my best recommendation is that you go and see it and decide for yourself.