"The position of annoying talking animal has been filled."

Rating: 4/10 (2 August 2004)

I've always been curious about "Shrek". The first movie was praised beyond belief, went to Cannes and was regarded as a great example of a sense of humour that was rarely seen on mainstream animation. For one reason or another, I never saw that movie. Just this year a "Shrek"-loving girlfriend dragged me to see the sequel ... and it's nothing short of awful.
Apparently, by the end of the original "Shrek", both the green ogre and the Princess Fiona are living happily in the swamp, until they get an invitation from Fiona's parents. This seems to foresee a series of intelligent, double entendre joke that finally arrive, but too late, when we are painfully aware of how lame and predictable they were. Then the movie gets lost in a meandering plot, and I mean meandering in a very bad way. Some hope arises with Puss with Boots, played by Antonio Banderas. He gets some real, honest laughs for a change but he's still just one secondary character, and the screenwriters seems more concerned with making a thousand movie spoofs a minute than with having a good array of supporting characters. A good movie spoof, well timed and appropriate, can be wonderful. But in "Shrek 2" they are placed constantly in a way that's just too annoying. If that is what is so innovating about its jokes, then, well, it sucks.
Also, the voice cast is just badly used and it shows a decidedly strong tendence to show off the quality and the high-browness of the production, instead of doing actual comedy. Julie Andrews stars as the Queen, a role that could've been played by absolutely anyone with the ability to speak, since it has no real development and her only moment in the limelight is at the end, just so she can get tender and leave a good moral to the kids. And what is it with hiring John Cleese to do, well, nothing special, like in the Harry Potter movies? And what is it with John Cleese accepting? Why can't I laugh my dear ass off with Cleese like in the Monty Python years.
This is just bad. Towards the ending it gets mildly amusing, with Shrek turned into a Bruce Campbell look-alike in a scene that features some solid jokes for a change. Of course, it's all set so the filmmakers can do a "Ghostbusters" satire in the meantime, combined with an "E.T." and a "Godzilla" joke.
Just lame.