A sweet, enjoyable start to the summer...

Rating: Null/10 (11 June 2004)

..."Shrek 2" starts where "Shrek" left off, with Shrek (Mike Myers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) arriving home from their honeymoon, meeting back up with Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and soon being invited to Fiona's parent's castle in the kingdom of "Far Far Away". King Harold (John Cleese) and the Queen (Julie Andrews) don't know that they're both ogres, of course.
The first "Shrek" was a very fun, very new and original film, and I didn't expect "Shrek 2" to duplicate that - and it didn't. While the original Shrek was funny for poking fun at fairy tale cliches, this one derives most of it's humor from pop culture references. This sometimes doesn't work, but most of the time it does.
It does have two master strokes, though. The new character of Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) is wonderfully written, animated and voiced, and the film's villain - Fairy Godmother (Jennifer Saunders) is hilarious and cool. The writers' ability to come up with great characters is still there (but we don't have John Lithgow this time around, which is an inevitable loss).
The voice acting is great too, the only "bad" voice performance comes from Cameron Diaz (of course). All the other actors do wonderfully in their parts, especially Murphy, Banderas and Cleese. The animation of the characters and settings is lush and full of life too, the movie is beautiful to look at.
But it is what it is: a light, clever sequel to a groundbreaking film. It's good for a ride, but I still prefer the first "Shrek", 7.5/10.