You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars.

Rating: 10/10 (25 July 2005)

You can do smartass humor or be poignant, but it's tough to do both in the same hour and a half. The only movie I can think of that pulled it off is Mr Roberts.
And then came Shrek, which uses pages from a bona fide book of fairy tales as toilet paper, shows the hero taking a slime shower and has maggots wriggling into place to create words Â– and that's only through the opening credits. Yet, after all that, and the candle made of ogre earwax and a donkey urinating out a campfire, it still manages the most poignantly beautiful scene ever committed to film as the hero and heroine contemplate their lives without each other to the accompaniment of Leonard Cohen's haunting Allelujah.
Mike Meyers as the title ogre, Eddie Murphy as his talking donkey sidekick, Cameron Diaz as the enchanted princess and John Lithgow as the vertically challenged villain are all brilliant. The script and direction match their efforts. The animation is simply the best ever done (even to the point of replicating the red-point sun reflection off the camera lens as the heroes emerge from a tunnel). Fantasia eat your heart out.
And it isn't just that this is the comedic equal of Arsenic and Old Lace and Young Frankenstein. Or that it is to animation what Citizen Kane was to cinematography. Or that, while creating the greatest of all fairy tales, it lampoons every one that came before it along with the Disney machine that put most of them on celluloid. It's greatest strength is that it's as societally important as Mr Smith Goes to Washington or To Kill a Mockingbird. Not all of us, in fact not many of us, grow up to be swans, and there's not a damn thing wrong with being an ugly duck.
Shrek is irreverently funny in a way that delights everyone from bratty kids to insensitive old farts. It's scenes that attempt romantic beauty are the equal of any classic Disney fairy tale. It's message is the most important ever delivered by any story: no matter who or what you are, there's a place for you in this world and you have a right to be happy being you.