Pixar still tops Dreamworks for all-ages family fare

Rating: 5/10 (7 July 2004)

My rating: 5/10
Shrek 2's target audience, unfortunately, doesn't fit my family's profile: my girls (7 and 3) are too young. For kids to appreciate Shrek 2 (or even for them not to experience a certain revulsion towards the character Shrek), they need to be older and slightly cynical, at least towards the prototypical Disney "and they lived happily ever after" fairy tale movies. However, even pre-teenage children will only capture a fraction of the references to popular culture and 20 year-old movies that pervade Shrek 2. Therefore, I submit that the target audience for Shrek 2 is a pair of pop culture saturated parents, and their post-Disney kids.
Since I'm not saturated with pop culture, I didn't get anywhere near all the references in Shrek 2. But even those that I did get, such as the Stay-Puft marshmallow man of Ghostbusters' fame, and Joan Rivers dishing out her commentary at the Academy Awards, were not exactly side-splitting funny. Amusing, yes, and Shrek 2 had its moments. But to me it felt like much of it was formulaic, and aimed at the true pop culture sophisticate.
Pixar, by contrast, has proven repeatedly that they know how to develop funny, warm computer animated movies that truly can be appreciated by all ages. Most all the Pixar films are classics that will still be viewed 20 years from now, whereas by then, Shrek 2 will have faded from memory.