Shrek Review

DreamWorks builds it as a weapon aimed at the competition, down to a theme park kingdom run by a short man with an inferiority complex, and the surprise is how little the picture needs the grudge. Eddie Murphy is the engine. Donkey talks constantly, much of it invented around the script, and the timing between him and Mike Myers is why this plays as comedy rather than as a list of references.

Cameron Diaz gets the harder job, since Fiona has to sell a punchline about her own body and stay a person, and she does. The animation was a genuine advance in 2001, especially the cloth and the dragon, and it is also the element that has aged hardest. Human faces look waxy now and the pop needle drops date the film to the month it opened. Under the jokes the structure is the same fairy tale it is mocking, which is the standard reservation critics raised then and still raise, and the sequel machine that followed has done the original no favors.

What survives is the argument. The film says the ugly thing is not waiting to be turned beautiful, then commits to that at the end instead of blinking, which is more than most of what it parodies ever managed. The first animation Oscar went here and the choice still looks correct.