Why was this so popular?

Rating: 4/10 (4 June 2005)

I really have a difficult time trying to figure out how a film like this could make $436 million at the domestic box office. Are American tastes so fond of immature fart jokes and already-dated pop-culture references? Apparently.
This film continues Dreamworks Animation's tradition of quantity over quality, the position their CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has held from day 1. But it's gotten worse in recent years with their CG attempts, lame-duck ripoffs of Pixar or Disney classics.
As for Shrek 2, I get the idea that the staff behind this picture actually believe that they're paying tribute to the fairy tales of yesteryear, when all they're doing is disrespecting them to hell and back. I don't know what people accept as "soul" nowadays, but this film certainly doesn't have any of it. How can I accept these characters in a tender moment when I know that one of them will probably pull a huge fart? I will give this film a point or two for the quality of some of their CG landscapes. Characters are a whole other story. You'd think that Dreamworks would remember after the first Shrek that they can't do digital humans, but nope. I've seen better animation and models in a video game. And the voices never really seem to mesh with the characters as in a Pixar film. It just doesn't work.
But people will buy the soundtrack anyways, and see the film ten times to catch all the inane pop-culture references, as if that's reason enough for this to be the third-highest grossing film of all time. Think about that. It's Titanic, Star Wars, and Shrek 2. I'm gonna be sick.