Story takes Detour

Rating: 7/10 (17 May 2001)

Disregarding the toilet humor, Shrek starts off with a great story. A libertarian ogre enjoys his solitude, until a lord in a quest for a perfect society, banishes all fairy tale creatures to his swamp. The ogre sets off to see the lord and re-establish his property rights. At this point for some reason the movie pretty much throws away this story line in favor of a very predictable one we've seen many times before. I still enjoyed the movie, but I would much rather have seen it follow the original plot line. Why did the lord feel banishing the fairy tale creatures would make society better? How did his subjects feel about this "perfect" society? We don't get any answers to these, all we get are crude jokes and a constant reminder that this movie was not made by Disney.
Shrek could have been a great movie, but decided to take the low road instead.