Surprisingly good!

Rating: 8/10 (2 January 2003)

I have had this movie for a few months now, but I didn't really bother to watch it, because I just didn't think it'd be that good. Well, seems I was wrong, once again, and that Shrek simply blew me away.
I see it as a fairy tale movie about fairy tales, but also about our life. You get all the so called elements of a fairy tale, like magic creatures and beautiful romance scenes...big castles and horrid dragons. Just that this movie is a parody of the fairy tale world. Of course, a parody that remains a fairy tale, but through this different vision we get the fun out of it.
The story is quite simple, and yet it has more "layers" than you'd expect. We get three characters, Shrek the ogre, Donkey (the donkey heh) and Princess Fiona, the one with two faces and the dragon. All four are lonely, but in fact they form two pairs. Initially in both pairs we see some clear opposites:Fiona beautiful, Shrek ugly; dragon huge, donkey small. But these differences come just from the aspect of these characters, and not from what they really are. Their meeting represents the end of their loneliness.
There are a lot of scenes from other fairy tales, as this movie is actually based on them. It may lack in originality at times, if you really want to hear that. But it compensates through great humor.
Also, there would be this nice town of lord Farquaad, named Duloc. It represents a town that seems perfect, but you just have to take a sharp look at it and notice how horrible life really is there. The people are being controlled by their small, yet horrible lord. Like the viewers that are present at a show - they see "applaud" they see "laugh"...it's what they see and what they do because others tell them. It's not something you can rely on. It's a manipulated society, something which does happen in our world too...much too often sometimes.
It's not right to say we have a flawless film on our hands, still it is a movie which many will enjoy, and most important will probably make you feel better. Isn't that what movies are about? Or at least in some high percentage...