SHREK

To see Shrek is to be transported into a world of storybook beauty of green meadows and starry skies as beautiful as a clear summer night. But there is also something odd, wonderfully odd. There are plenty of familiar faces here from the best known fairytales, but they are up to modern jokes and sensibilities. References to the real world abound, from Tic Tacs to talks of the need for therapy after a long adventure.

            Shrek, DreamWorks’ crowning jewel, presents us with the best of both worlds. It loves folktales and classic fables, but it lives in contemporary times, revisioning with old storytellers like the Brothers Grimm imagined through modern interpretation. One of the most memorable examples” Snow White becomes an eligible bachelorette who “lives with seven men, but is not easy”.

            At its core, however, Shrek is a pure, delightful, comical adventure in the classic fairytale sense. Its origins, in fact, come from a children’s book by New Yorker cartoonist William Steig about a curmudgeonly green ogre living in an isolated swamp. Shrek takes this misanthropic brute and develops him into a misunderstood creature impossible not to love. Yes, he still wants to be left alone in the swamp where he dwells inside a hollow tree stump warning villagers to keep out by reposting their own “Beware Ogre” posters, but his misanthropy a forced lifestyle. His world, even though it is itself inhabited by weird characters, has shunned him and the townspeople would rather see him dead.

            But times are tough for all fairytale creatures in the kingdom these days. Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow), the megalomaniac ruler of the Kingdom of Duloc, has ordered them out of the kingdom so that he can expand his empire. Having no other place to go, the sprites become squatters in Shrek’s swamp. They’re all here from the Three Little Pigs to the Three Blind Mice. The ogre won’t have it, though, and sets off to confront Farquaad. Farquaad has a dilemma of his own. In order be king he must marry a princess and the one he desires, Fiona, is being held captive in a castle by a dragon. The conniving ruler sees an opportunity and strikes a deal with Shrek. If the ogre can bring Princess Fiona back safely he will order the unwelcomed guests off the swamp and return the property to Shrek.

            And so begins the journey to rescue the princess. In many ways, Shrek will take the shape of a traditional epic journey full of danger and adventure along the way. But Shrek is as much a satire of the conventional fable as Don Quixote is of ancient tales of daring knights. If Rocinante was less than a noble steed, at least he kept quiet. But against his will Shrek finds himself accompanied on his quest by an unrelentingly chatty Donkey with Eddie Murphy’s giddy motor-mouth. “Sure it talks,” Shrek says. “It’s getting him to shut up that’s the problem.”

            The humor lies in the very premise. A spoiled nobleman like Farquaad is too fickle to go and rescue the princess himself and so his traditional role is assumed by an ogre and his donkey, two of the least likely figures to set off on a path to heroism if you ask Hans Christian Andersen. Shrek 2 would heckle expectations further with Fiona’s intended champion arriving too late and looking for her in vain beyond yonder castle walls. For now, though, Shrek and Donkey move forth shattering clichés while still engaging in all the thrills of epic journeys much like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza strode off on their merry way bursting the bubble of stoic knighthood while (often unintentionally) creating a literary adventure like no other. A difference in Shrek, though, is that Don Quixote was, as many (though not all) would say, delusional and genuinely believed he was still a gallant knight-errant on a mission to save the world. Shrek, on the other hand, is well aware that he is going against the norm and cares very little for the laws of chivalry. Neither does he care to break them. He just wants to get the job done and get back to his home.

            Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), meanwhile, has remained in the castle tower harboring dream of an old fashioned fairytale rescue. A brave knight, she believes, will come sweep her off her feet, carry her beyond the castle walls, and they will live happily ever after. As Shrek said after reading such an ending as the film opens, “Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen.”

            But the beauty of Shrek rests on two levels. The stunning visuals continue to enchant more than a decade later. In 2001 they created a new standard early on for computer animation, creating vibrant landscapes evoking aspects of central Europe, Great Britain, and the enchanted forests of our collective imaginations.

            The other level is strength in characterization and each of the central players are more than what they seem to be. Princess Fiona has a few surprises of her own and by the end we are left to conclude that her dream of a classical rescue was purely an attachment to tradition. Tough girls appeared in animated movies before Shrek, but none held their own like Fiona. Donkey proves wiser than the typical comic sidekick, much like Mushu the diminutive dragon Murphy voiced in Disney’s Mulan. Donkey is really more of a reincarnation of Mushu than a parody as some have analyzed. Both are less majestic than their common counterpart (a giant dragon and a stallion), but both prove helpful beyond the comic relief. Ultimately, Shrek is willing to let his walls come down. He has a heart and wants his inner layers to be seen. He even has a sense of humor, usually at the expense of Lord Farquaad.

            If there is any hypocrisy in mocking Lord Farquaad for his short stature in a film so devoted to tolerance consider that Farquaad nastiness was not caused by his shortness but, rather, motivated by it. Take it this way, he looks down on his subjects as freaks and yet cannot come to terms with his own perceived imperfection. He compensates through decadence and tyranny. The joke is more on his hypocrisy than his height.

            Even the colorful cast of characters the travelers meet on the way have tricks up their sleeves. The dragon that so fiercely guarded the castle where Fiona was trapped herself has a problem not unlike Shrek’s. The movie also challenges the noble image of Robin Hood, who in this movie is inexplicably French and voiced by Vincent Cassel, then collecting a few English-speaking roles under his belt while dabbling in computer animation in his own country voicing Diego the saber-toothed tiger for the French version of Ice Age. 

            Feature cartoons from animation’s dark age (60s to early 80s) for their reliance on the established personas of character actors behind the voices for a lazy form of characterization. But times have changed and this is what is best loved about Hanna-Barbera’s animated TV stars. Yogi Bear is today loved by old fans of The Honeymooners for his Art Carney pattern and the similarities between Ralph Cramden and Fred Flintstone are so similar (at the time, Jackie Gleeson even considered a lawsuit against Hanna-Barbera that could have pulled the plug on the series before he was advised against this PR wrecking move) that their fan base often overlaps.

            Before animation moved to TV, cartoon voice actors were largely unknown. The few exceptions to this rule (Mae Questel as Betty Boop, William Costello and Jack Mercer as Popeye the Sailor Man, Clarence “Ducky” Nash as many of the Disney ducks, and Pinto Colvig got his start as Goofy before going to Bozo the Clown) become as known as they were because of the characters they voiced and not the other way around. In this era, only Mel Blanc became something of a celebrity in his own right for his pan-studio contributions. Bringing celebrities voices to animated features was seen as an easy instant character creation. It was tolerated for TV, were the quality of animation was limited anyway, but it was treated as shameful in theatrical films such as Disney’s The Aristocats and Robin Hood.

            Today, and 1992’s Aladdin (thanks to Robin Williams as the Genie) and 1994’s The Lion King may have been turning points, voicing cartoons has become a lucrative role for stars. The reluctance of older animators to this tactic has never been officially settled, but no one could have stolen the show better than Eddie Murphy as the voice of Donkey. The late Chris Farley had recorded most of Shrek’s voice when DreamWorks bought the rights to the book soon after opening in 1994. After his death in 1997, Mike Myers took over and it is doubtful anyone could have been more creative, combining his memories of his upbringing amongst Scottish-Canadians and his Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers films.

            Yes, voices are a major driving force to the popularity of Shrek. But many of the supporting characters, voiced by lesser known actors, are also granted one or two plum lines, mostly to throw jabs at Disney. DreamWorks was born out of a feud at Disney, when Jeffrey Katzenberg left the studio after a falling out with Michael Eisner. What better target for Shrek than Disney’s conformity? Disney was in the business of reimagining fairytales from early on, but never breaking the conventions. Many of the fabled characters that appear here are a mockery of their Disney makeover. Pinocchio lies about being a real boy and an awestruck Peter Pan marvels that Donkey “can fly” when pixie dust is spilled. For Donkey’s response, DreamWorks even hits Disney in their non-folklore department and takes a jab at the crows from Dumbo, “You ain’t never seen a donkey-fly!”

            Shrek was DreamWorks’s first biting punch at Disney, though the rivalry was clearly visible when DreamWorks released Antz to coincide with the release of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life in 1998. Shrek demonstrates the full extent of the hostility, with Eisner himself thinly disguised as the despot Lord Farquaad.

            The playful pranks directed at Disney and folklore in general are often funny, but they are balanced out by moments of genuine tenderness and poignancy. This is, at its core, a story about a longing for acceptance. Even the soundtrack is balanced in mood, from the joyful defiance of Smash Mouth’s “All Star” to the somberness of Rufus Wainwright’s rendition of “Hallelujah”, to reflect the duality of the film’s nature.

            Overall, however, Shrek is a fun glorious delight of the kind seldom brought to family movies. It’s an animated tour de force that is perhaps a reflection of its time. In the months before 9/11, America was still free from the wariness that the age of terrorism would bring and free to embrace both the prosperous boom in computer animation and the loving reworking of traditional fables. Shrek is a capsule in the best sense, reflecting the carefree optimism of the dawn of the 21^st century. By comparison, the three sequels it spawned grew increasingly dark in tone. But this first gem started a trend that changed animation. Even Disney has grown fond of tweaking antiquated rules with such films as Enchanted (which has some subtle retaliation at the Shrek franchise), Tangled, and The Princess and the Frog, a hand-drawn retelling of the old story set in Jazz Age New Orleans with African-American protagonists. It’s not just an update in location, but the heroine is put in charge of creating a happy ending.

            But Shrek did more for DreamWorks than establishing computer animation as its chief asset. In their first years, the studio tried to prove themselves against Disney’s might with traditionally animated films like The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado, but Disney had cornered that market and decent reviews did little to convince audiences otherwise. Shrek was a turning point with which DreamWorks discovered its strongest weapon. Rightfully, the studio has embraced the film as its first triumph and it remains their greatest accomplishment, good enough to stand head to head against Pixar.

            More than ten years later, however, it’s hard to watch Shrek without a slight sense of sadness. Sadness because we have seen just how seldom Western animation this good comes along. Shrek is one of its best moments and it remains something of a measuring stick, especially for DreamWorks.