Applaud its intentions and ambition.

Rating: 7/10 (16 July 2001)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** 'Shrek' in its tagline calls itself 'the greatest fairytale never told'. This is because it's not really a fairy tale at all. We first see Shrek in a makeshift doubleyewcee reading a conventional fairy-tale. The latter is set up as something archaic, sappy and nothing to do with a real-world represented by the 'modern' music that introduces Shrek and his irreverent attitudes.
We are expected to laugh with him at old-fashioned fairy tales. Throughout the fairy tale rules are overturned - the ogre gets the girl; the beautiful princess turns out to be, er, less conventionally attractive; the dragon metamorphoses from fierce Godzilla to cuddly love-struck Gadzuki. But by destroying the fairy-tale archetypes, 'Shrek' destroys the resonance of the fairy-tale, and its p.c. finale, while very moving (I welled up at least four times during 'Shrek'; so much for anti-Disney) does not make an impact because it's not true to a 'poetic' truth that reflects real life. A smelly ogre is not going to cadge a rich babe because she fortuitously turns into a smelly ogre herself - the rich, young and pretty tend to stick together.

The conventional fairy tale Shrek and the implied audience mock actually has powerful stuff the film ignores - the virginal princess seeking a first kiss that will rescue her from a dragon guarding a castle. These things - princesses, kisses, castles, dragons are powerful, age-old metaphors for sexuality, patriarchy, socialisation etc. By undercutting their symbolic function, Shrek undercuts the reason they were so potent for so long in the first place. I am not saying Shrek should pay obeisance to the altar of the fairy tale, but the likes of Angela Carter and Jan Svankmajer have shown what is possible when you explore fairy tales and their dark undercurrents, especially sexual (most of Perrault's fairy tales were instructive morality, sexuality and socialising tales for young girls).
This is not to deny the genuine pleasure offered by the film, just to suggest why it didn't plumb my depths like the best Disney (who, like a certain soft drink, seem to have a special formula that is inimitable and unmockable, little as we'd like to admit it). The characters are lovely, and so is Mike Myers' Scottish accent. John Lithgow, looking like a miniature Laurence Olivier playing Richard III is such a hoot it's a shame there isn't more of him (arf!).
Individual scenes are priceless - Shrek's swamp as dumping ground for fairy tale refugees, a sequence full of irreverent (if dubious political) glee; the sublime Dimco sequence, revealing its source's charmless, totalitarian monumentality; the whole Robin Hood sequence, complete with French outlaw, wonderfully daft song (I wanted more songs! Sorry) and unproariously funny 'Matrix' spoof.
Visually, the film isn't the revelation I'd heard it was - maybe my local has a lousy screen, but I didn't see anything particularly amazing about the donkey's hairs, and the animation as a whole had the stiffness, as well as the charm, of old woodcuts. There were some glorious exceptions - the sunlight dappling the forest as our heroes return home from the castle; the gorgeous moonlight vigil; the awesome dragon castle sequence, the only time the film gets to the Gothic terror of original fairy tales, with its rubble, noble skeletons and fast fireballs.