Funny but charmless

Rating: 6/10 (15 November 2004)

One of the successful things about the original Shrek was its combination of a children's story with gags that adults would enjoy. This sequel focuses on the gags and forgets almost entirely about story. A key sign of this is the number of situations or events that have no real purpose in the story outside of their, alightly adult, gag-value. The introduction of modern life into the story is also an extremely lame ploy to get cheap laughs, and lucrative commercial tie-ins. It's a fun film, with great performances from Jennifer Saunders and Antonio Banderas, but it's irritatingly 'knowing' and smacks of the media in-joke cynicism that the first film so successfully, and subtly, satirised. I felt a bit uncomfortable watching it with the kids.