Sweetly cynical

Rating: 8/10 (11 December 2003)

Sweet, yet cynical...beautiful landscapes and textures colored by Myers's "If it's not Scottish, it's crap" skit from SNL (not a good thing). A faerie tale wrought with sarcasm and jaded one-liners.
This movie is definitely for the adults in the family. The children should be spared this tired, jaded, and cynical view of the world presented by our hero and his side-kicking ass.
While the story is typical, the characters are very well developed and the computer graphics are fantastic. The background textures and skin tones are beautifully realistic and you can tell there were many great talents devoted to this production. The textures of the trees, the characters, and even the facial hair growth of the characters was amazing. Too bad they did not put more into the story to rate this wonderful CGI treatment.
Unfortunately, they did not, and it shows. The tritely delivered one liners, the cynical philosophies, and the jaded presentation of love and self esteem should probably not go directly into the minds of America's children. There are enough sources for this negative kind of thinking, in my opinion, and the children do understand what is being said. Never for a moment should you be under the misconception that they are ignorant of the underlying meanings of these adult-based jibes and insults.
I love this movie, myself. But, having been a parent, I can safely say that were there small children about, they would not be watching Shrek very often; if at all, until they were old enough to understand that there is a difference between cynicism and sarcasm, and that what is funny is very seldom what is right.
All that aside, as an adult, I love this movie. The story, as I have already stated, is a bit recycled, but nevertheless, it is classic. Unfortunately, the fairy tale portion of this production is more of a fairy tail.
Though I loved the Donkey. This character (done well by Eddie Murphy) was the comedian, bouncing the one liners off of Shrek's "straight-man" persona, leaving Eddie Murphy to get all the laughs while Myers's character (working from the murky depths of a horribly muddled accent) must remain in the dark and gloomy mode, as ogres are not known to be very social creatures.
The messages here are plain and simple, right from the start: love yourself, friends have value, and be true to yourself. Good messages which do come through the sarcastic wit and cynical philosophies, regardless of the strong delivery of these devices, but perhaps a bit watered-down by the time it filters through into children's minds.
This is nevertheless, a fun movie with good characters, a classic good vs. evil format, and strong visual effects generated by true artisans in the field of computer graphics interface. I love the inclusion of the Dragon as a non-evil entity. Dragons are far too often the symbol of evil incarnate; an erroneous and unfair convenience generated by the Catholic church of the first millennium. After the Druid priests were converted, their ties with Dragon kind had to be severed in order to fully control the followers of these priests. Thus the link between Dragons and evil was created, established, and used wrongfully in their persecution. I found it philosophically and theologically heartening.
But I digress.
This is a fun movie, if you can hear the soundtrack over the cheering of the executives behind this production, and can manage to feel uplifted by the love story as it filters past the cold-hearted jibes and cynicism found throughout.
If you haven't seen it, do so. It's well worth the 93 minutes invested. Just screen it first, if you plan on allowing your kids to view it. As I said, some of the philosophies are a bit cold and hard to stomach.
It rates a 8.1/10 from...
the Fiend :.