Is this a spoof?

Rating: 8/10 (12 June 2004)

While Shrek 2 was another great, confectionery romp like the first one, the homages to old fairy tales and other movies are approaching the area of campy spoofs. I was just waiting for Leslie Nielsen to pop up somewhere. Fiona pulls a layer of mud off of Shrek's face, kissing him upside down like Mary Jane Watson in Sam Raimi's Spiderman, The Little Mermaid washes onto shore and Fiona throws her back to the sharks as though she were trying to steal Shrek away from her, she and Shrek enjoy a romantic time lit by the light of lots of little Tinkerbells in jars, Fiona becomes the Lord of the Ring, and Shrek later in the movie cooks up and is helped out by the Stay-Puft Gingerbread Man.
This is all great stuff that movie buffs are sure to love, but a lot of the humor has gone downhill, not necessarily in the maturity department (the first movie was pretty immature at many points), but in the tact department (the first movie was immature, but tactfully so). As best as I can remember, for example, there were no loud fart jokes in part 1 that blew Shrek's untucked shirt out behind him from the force of the wind. Shrek has gone from moderate irritation and sarcasm to downright anger, and much of the entire first half of the movie is saved by a masterful performance from Antonio Banderas as the voice of Puss in Boots. Which is too bad, too, because once the movie gets going it goes right back to the same level of animated superiority of its predecessor.
In Shrek 2, Shrek and Fiona are now married, as we saw in the end of the last movie, which necessarily brings the narrative to a slightly higher level of maturity, since the main characters are past a major point in their lives that most of their target audience is not even close to. Donkey has returned, uninvited again, but dearly loved by the audience at least as much as he is for some reason detested by Shrek. I think that the main problem with Shrek 2 is that the conflict is so minimized. Shrek is married now, and the prevailing conflicts in the movie are things like meeting the in-laws and keeping Fiona from being drugged into falling in love with another, more politically correct man, while part 1 was all about the fairy tale quests to slay the fire-breathing dragon and save the beautiful princess.
Of course, even though he's married, Shrek is still an ogre and still has the manners and demeanor of an ogre, which are for some reason epitomized at a dinner with his new in-laws in order to create sort of a Meet the Parents type scene, except that the King, who Shrek is supposed to impress, apparently has table manners not too dissimilar from Shrek's. Maybe the movie's trying to say that there's really not much difference between royalty and ogres.
In Shrek 1, Shrek saved the princess and won her heart (thanks in no small part to the fact that she has a little condition that turned her into a ogre at night). Now, in the sequel, the real Prince Charming, who Aesop might dictate should have saved her in the first place, goes to the highest chamber in the storybook castle to rescue her and finds only a gender-confused wolf there reading the latest copy of Pork Illustrated, and is understandably furious. Thus begins his quest to find the princess and win her heart, even though she has already been rescued (from the imprisonment imposed by the very parents Shrek is out to impress) and her heart already won.
Responding to a summons from Fiona's parents, who want to meet their daughter's new husband, they go on a long journey to reach the kingdom of Far, Far, Away (with Donkey all the while asking if they're there yet), and are met with the expected shock of a kingdom and two parents not ready to welcome back two enormous, hideous ogres, and all manner of hilarious mayhem ensues. Joan Rivers also makes a cameo as Joan Rivers, commentating on the outfits of the stars as they parade down the red carpet.
And by the way, who has a grudge against poor Pinocchio? Not only does he get caught wearing women's underwear, but it's a thong and he lies about it! And then, to add injury to insult, as it were, he gets turned into a real boy just in time to suffer a fall that would have shattered most of his brand new bones, and then he gets turned back into a puppet again! What did he ever do to deserve such shabby treatment??