Shrek

U

5/5

It looks like the next jaw-dropping stage in computer-generated photo-realism has arrived. Keen to keep Disney on its toes, DreamWorks has come up with its own Toy Story-styled gem, Shrek.

Shrek, a green ogre who lives alone in a swamp (as voiced in a gruff scottish accent by Mike Myers) is not pleased when a host of refugee fairytale characters start squatting on his doorstep.

It would seem the dastardly pint-sized Prince Farquand (John Lithgow, relishing every moment) has got it in for all those cute fairytale regulars, triggering a mass exodus from his kingdom of Dulac.

In what looks rather like a witch-hunt, he's put a bounty on their heads and is rounding them up. He's so eager to locate their whereabouts he even interrogates the Gingerbread Man Gestapo-style.

But he needn't have bothered. Shrek turns up at the castle and unwittingly lands them all in it, telling the prince he wants the squatters off his swampland.

However, they do all turn up at the sing-a-long finale, so it's nice to know they haven't been ethnically cleansed.

The main story kicks in when Prince Farquand decides he needs a queen to make him king.

With a little help from his magic mirror performing a nifty Blind Date skit, he arrives at the conclusion that, rather than Cinderella and Snow White, Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) is definitely the girl for him. It's just that she's locked away in a tower guarded by a dragon. So the prince, being the good-for-nothing weasel he is, gets Shrek to do the rescuing.

What, of course, ensues amid a movie teeming with gags, detail and knowingness is an unlikely Beauty and the Beast-style love story, but with a daring twist in its tale.

Unfortunately, Shrek is not quite the endearing and poignant creation he could have been. Unlike Disney's Beast, he's way too self-assured to warrant full tragic-figure status. And he seems to enjoy his own company a tad too much.

Subsequently, when he does launch into his beauty-not-skin-deep speech you're never entirely convinced by his shunning-others-before-they-can-shun-him vulnerability.

But thankfully his comedy double-act with jive-talking, motor-mouth Donkey (Eddie Murphy really on form) compensates aplenty. Inviting himself along for the ride, Donkey spends most of the movie trailing after Shrek, generally annoying him, which works a treat.

So maybe Shrek isn't in the league of the Disney greats, but it's great enough, and you'll have a hard time not being bowled over by it.

July 6, 2001 10:25

Robert Elliston