Just to throw a bit of a political spin on it

Rating: Null/10 (25 May 2001)

Shrek is probably about as close as we are going to get to a satire of the Mickey Mouse empire without the Disney legal strike team shutting down the movie. In fact, if this film was produced on a smaller budget by an independent we probably wouldn't be watching it.
Shrek strikes an incredible good balance between lowbrow and highbrow humor combining them in ways that are entertaining while still satarizing the over-sweet faery-tale movie cannon that we grew up with. Disney may throw in a few anacrhonistic winks and nods into its animated films (setting a Big Boy in the Andes). Shrek actively subverts the entire genre with twisted references to just about every Disney animated film made, and Disneyland its self.
While this is a very good film, it certainly had some down-points. The primary character and scenic animation is beautiful but the minor characters look and move like "Thunderbirds are Go." In many scenes the minor characters just don't move like human beings. Since most of the best humor in the film is grounded in the visual (and textual) references to other films, I don't expect Shrek to be a classic. Mike Myers slipping in and out of a pesudo-scots accent was slightly irritating.
However, these are minor quibbles. This is one of the few films I'll probably see twice in the theatres.