Vastly over-rated

Rating: Null/10 (5 September 2003)

The 1990s was a strange decade for the Disney corporation, one which saw huge commercial success in its first half, and creative bankruptcy in its second. Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King were a hat-trick of classics that matched critical success with financial reward, but what followed was a series of repetitive features which proved the winning formula was being so streamlined that nothing else remained. In Pocahontas, Hercules and Tarzan, we saw only a misfit who dreamt of being understood and a sidekick or two ready to chip in with the one-liners. Even the more satisfying efforts, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mulan, were burdened with the same old formula. The theme of the underdog and his sidekick had long been a staple of Disney's output, but there had always been something more, something that elevated it above its repetition. Now the bare bones were being presented as the living, breathing whole, and the feeling of déjà vu was becoming increasingly irritating.
With Disney's offerings looking as stale as one of Lincoln's home made baps, and with the arrival of computer-generated animation, its rivals had their best chance yet at defeating the sleeping giant. But somehow the opportunity was not matched with films of sufficient quality; The Pebble and the Penguin, Anastasia, Antz, Titan AE and The Road to El Dorado did little to fill the potential gap in the market. If the response to Disney's stagnation was slow it can be easily understood given that animated features take three or four years to produce, but, still, an opportunity was being missed.
In the Spring of 2001, patience was rewarded with Shrek, a CG animation from DreamWorks which wooed the critics, busted blocks and snatched the first ever Best Animated Feature Oscar from under Disney's noses, leaving poor old Walt spinning in his grave faster than a bottle at a pre-teen sleep-over. It was with great anticipation that I sat down to watch it, ready to embrace the cynicism and subversive humour that had been praised so highly.
The story of an irritable green ogre sent to rescue a post-feminist Princess began well enough, starting, as so many Disney movies have started, with a book of fairytales being opened and narrated in a non-threatening tone. Suddenly, Shrek, voiced by Mike Myers, tore a page from the book and wiped his butt with it - a promising start. Unfortunately, it hinted more at its level of humour than at its subversive nature; the jokes begin in the toilet, and there they remain. The jokes about belching were outnumbered only by the jokes about farting, both of which were abandoned only once, for the high-class humour of seeing Shrek being hit in the groin.
Further disappointment came in its feeble attempts to ridicule Disney's monopolistic use of fairytale clichés. If a film is going to rubbish its predecessors it has to be smarter than the ones it attacks, but Shrek should have a dunce's hat plonked on its big, dumb, empty head. Like Scream and Galaxy Quest, it comes across as being ill-informed, pointing out some clichés while blindly serving up others with a short memory and a straight face. Beyond that, the same old Disney sentiment it spends the first forty minutes rubbishing comes on thick and fast in the second half, where we learn that beauty is only skin deep, that friendships should be valued, and that blah blah bliddy blah.
Beyond fairytale cliché, Shrek suffers terribly from a mammoth helping of movie cliché. Jobbing writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio serve up a story of complete conventionality, making us endure such lines as `It's quiet... too quiet' and having their wafer-thin plot hinge on a half-overheard conversation, a plot device so old it was invited to God's christening.
Its various faults add up to a missed opportunity, its subversive streak as unconvincing as Mike Myers' Scottish accent. Disney has its faults - now more than ever - and it deserves to be ridiculed, but it has to be done by something altogether smarter than this. After all, Shrek is the misfit who dreams of being understood, Eddie Murphy's Donkey is the sidekick on hand to chip in with the one-liners, the Princess teaches us that beauty is only skin deep, and nothing is more Disney than that.