Far from being just another Mickey Mouse animation; Shrek is a good natured, well pitched animated film which ticks enough boxes.

Rating: 6/10 (9 April 2011)

Shrek begins with in a fanciful, overly romantic tone as what we assume to be an off screen narrator speaks in warm voice whilst dictating to us the words accompanying the images of your more stereotypical fairy-tale novella. After a few pages, it's revealed the narrator was, in fact, the titular character turning the pages before we hear him scoffing at such literature and verbally dismissing it as nonsense. What follows is the tearing out of a page from the book in order to use the item, now rendered a loose discarded piece of paper, for other such activities too crude to mention here; a plain-as-day rejecting of such unreal narrative notions and elements in order for other usages after the establishment that such notions do exist. While hinting at revision, one cannot deny that by the time all things have been said and done and the film has reached its emotionally charged climax, 2001 digitally animated comedy Shrek is, in hindsight, all too keen to resort to such codes in order to push home its would-be emotional drive. The film never really struck me as the great; fun-for-all; computer animated glory-fest is has done to others, but more-so as a decent adventure film with its politics all in the right place and an effective buddy comedy toing and froing between three very distinct, very irregular but highly characterised central performers.
When the door to the outhouse in which the titular Shrek resides during that opening swings open revealing our lead, we get a good look at both the large green Ogre that Mike Myers voices and the sort of life he leads for the first time. Inhabiting a secluded swamp in the not so dense forest of an enchanted land, the beast has a grotesque but functioning way of living which sends up many-a human traits such as the brushing of one's teeth; preparing meals and taking showers thus burring lines between what might constitute as anthropomorphism and a character in a narrative framework you could just as easily humanify – in a world rife with both human beings and distinct fictitious, fairy-tale/nursery-rhyme characters, Shrek beclouds is the bridge between the two predominant interspecies. He lives a lonely life, but one which he very-much enjoys; a peaceful one, despite being somewhat ferocious but a functioning one despite the isolation. Early on, it's established the height he has over human-beings as well as the problems he appears to have with those of an authoritarian ilk; the fear-factor Shrek possess arriving in-tow and giving him a mark advantage over most.
Around him sees a land ruled by the tyrannical, imperialist Lord Farquaad (Lithgow); a man besotted with rounding up each and every anthropomorphic character, ranging from Pinnochio to the three blind mice, that plagues his kingdom so as to place them in a ghetto-like locale which just happens to double up as Shrek's lonely pad. Farquaad inhabits a walled in central hub named Duloc, which sports a Disney World-like entrance, in which he distributes his evilness; the torturing of innocents and the ruing of not having a partner seemingly his day's norm. With the bad news dished out and a severe disrupture to Shrek's already established world looming, the ogre takes it upon himself whilst aided by Eddie Murphy's motor-mouthed Donkey, whom through one means or another stumbles into his life, to venture out and deal with this problem in the most direct and no-nonsense of fashions. However, Shrek's arrival at Duloc to see Farquaad only complicates matters when the ruler offers him the chance to rid his land of the creatures so as to retain his old ways if he so manages to bring Pricness Fiona (Diaz) back from a dragon guarded tower so as to marry him.
The journey back to the kingdom following the obtaining of Fiona sees the film hint at some rather unorthodox traits that Fiona may sport, her ability to interact with the world around her in an uncanny fashion leading to later reveals. All of this gives way to the film's chief politic: that it's better to be who you are and admit to it than cover up and attempt to be somebody else, and in sticking true-to-yourself, you will eventually find more in the form of happiness than you would living a surface lie. There can be little doubt the team behind the film put an awful lot of effort into proceedings; the film sporting numerous moments that display their eye for detail, an instance in which the overly powerful lead accidentally yanks a door handle clean out of its hinges upon impatiently dragging a character from where they were in a room to the exit one of them – made even funnier when we realise that character is wittering on with poetic but humorous waffling, a slight instance which is easy to miss and yet has had precise craft to it. The film is a middling effort, a short and sharp and breezy tale of a somewhat self-centred lead operating with a free-spirited and friendly supporting character whose livelihood is itself in jeopardy; the reoccurring question as to whether the lead will be able to achieve a sort of parity as well as see the error of his ways essentially what's being tested. Its messages and ideas are explored in a routine and passable enough manner, the bulk of it fairly simplistic without exploring any particularly brilliant territory, but it isn't without charm nor some genuinely amusing or indeed heartfelt moments even if it is running on adrenalised formula.