Shrek (2001)

PG.  I remember thinking that people were losing their minds thinking that Shrek was offensive when I was in college.  No, they were pretty right.  This was the era where animated films tried to put in jokes that went over the heads of kids so parents could enjoy them. But Shrek straight up swears...a lot.  Also, figure out what Farquaad means.  It's very Google-able.  PG.

DIRECTORS: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson

I'm ashamed, guys.  I've gone too far.  I acknowledge that I have a problem, but I'm really not looking for help.  This year, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is up for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards.  Now, I've seen the first three Shreks before.  (Okay, I'm fairly certain I've seen Shrek the Third before a week ago.)  But I hadn't seen them since college.  Do I need to see all of the Shrek movies plus the first Puss in Boots movie before seeing Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.  Probably not.  Am I going to do it so I can fill in the space on the collections page?  Yeah.  Yeah, I'm doing that.

There was a time, probably around the Moulin Rouge! years, where I thought that Shrek was brilliant.  While I'm going to one day and cringe watch Moulin Rouge! again, I'm mostly happy to say that Shrek mostly holds up.  It may not be a masterwork, but it is a very good film.  Now, it seems like I should be able to dismount from this comment and ride off into the sunset, but why Shrek works doesn't make a lick of sense.  The easy answer is that Shrek is painfully, PAINFULLY dated.  My wife insists that she's never seen Shrek before.  (I, for some reason, doubt her.  She responded to the film as if it was old hat.  Maybe it's just entered the cultural zeitgeist enough that there are no references that she hasn't secondhand absorbed.)  But the first thing that she pointed out is that the movie looks bad.  I forgive Shrek this.  I don't think I had that reaction when I watched it in 2001. I probably thought that it was revolutionary. After all, I remember being blown away by the animation in Toy Story, and that thing looks rough by today's standards.

But more of the roughness comes from elements of plot.  A lot of Shrek just...happens.  For those not in the know, Lord Farquaad is a dig on the newly formed Dreamworks animators at their former Disney boss.  Remember, I really liked the first Shrek.  All this nonsense is somehow evidence for how it shouldn't work, but does.  Farquaad is potentially one of the most underdeveloped bad guys in cinema. I'm sure that if I splice together all of Lord Farquaad's scenes into a supercut, it couldn't be more than ten minutes long.  Farquaad is more of a concept than a villain.  He's abnormally short.  There's no explanation, except for his height in the same way that there's little explanation for my abnormally short height.  Okay.  But he wants a wife so he can become king, which is a concept that doesn't really have a lot of background behind it.  Also, it seems like...anyone could be the Queen.  Maybe there's a princess that wants to be a queen and wants to marry a short dude.  After all, despite everything that Randy Newman believes in, short people can be lovable.

There's this whole subplot about fairy tale creatures being forcably removed from their swamps.  For a hot minute, it seems like Shrek is going to tackle the refugee crisis.  But, no.  That's not a story that matters to Shrek.  If anything, it's accidental characterization that honestly works.  Shrek, self-centered hermit that he is, completely misses that some truly heinous stuff is happening.  He just went through this whole labor camp moment and it didn't even phase him.  It's what Donkey just escaped. But there is this real evil that could be the focus of the story and it is barely a blip in the plot.  From Shrek's perspective, this is a story about how he hates neighbors and that he can't get any piece and quiet.  And the weirdest part of that whole sentence is that the movie wants us to have the same opinion.  Because Shrek doesn't care about the dictatorship and borderline apartheid happening in this story, neither do we.  For a second, I thought that there was no reason that the fairy tale creatures were being displaced and even now, it's a little hazy.  I do remember that when Shrek goes to Duloc, there's a competition to get Princess Fiona.  Do you know what? I don't know if I remember a reason why all of the fairy tales are being moved out besides a general evilness.  I thought I remembered for a second, but that's how confusing the motivations of Farquaad are.  Maybe we just accept some things.

I'm ashamed to write this paragraph because Shrek wears its messaging on its sleeves.  I'm the guy who is trying to talk about allegories of segregation and prejudice, but the movie itself won't even talk about those things.  Nah, instead, I give the movie a round of applause for its primary message.  I have the burden of time behind what I write.  Dreamworks, in 2023, is simply an alternative for Disney.  It's not doing anything revolutionary. It's just...not Disney today.  But I want to jump to the really weird year of 2001, where Smash Mouth's big hit "All Star" can be heard in a variety of cinema. Dreamworks is a company built out of spite.  It hated that Disney had become stale and soulless.  (A sentiment that my Zoomer students are abhorred by, given that they often were raised by the Disney products of this era.)  But if Dreamworks, in particular Shrek, exists to be a slap in the face to Disney, the takeaway of this movie is borderlne revolutionary.  Fiona, for all of her weird characterization, will be the template for future Disney princesses.  She is absolutely gorgeous in human form, yet fights better than Shrek.  Her entire imprisonment is gaslighting by her parents to accept that princesses must be devoid of empowerment.  But ultimately, the big takeaway is that she is beautiful no matter what she looks like.

Fiona's transformation into her true form, an ogre like Shrek, is fundamentally about refusing to accept the things that one actually values.  There seems to be a sense of relief when, upon receiving relief from her curse, to find out that she's an ogre.  There's no moment where she curses the turn in the curse.  After all, the reasonable explanation is that, born a human, she would return to humanity.  Now, this is where I can start analyzing.  But it puts me in a compromising position.  The breakdown of this read might be one of trans-rights.  After all, there's the narrative that Fiona has always felt like a different person before her exterior matched her interior understanding of herself. She also exhibits traditionally male traits, especially given that Shrek is a send up of archetypal norms.  She burps, eats what should be considered gross foods, and is naturally violent.  (It's a problem that some of these traits are associated with masculinity, but it's there.)  But I'm going to cite Shrek 2 with its transphobia as the example of how this can't be the message of the story.  Yeah, the early 2000s were a super gross time.  While I appreciadte the message of Fiona appreciating her body positivity (I hate me too for writing all of this), Shrek also displays this simplicity behind what is good and what is abnormal.

But, again, somehow Shrek just works.  A lot of that falls on the entire notion of fun.  The first Shrek movie is a lot of fun.  I asked my students what they thought of the Shrek sequels and most of them had only seen through parts 2 or 3.  That might be what makes the first two Shrek movies worth watching. When tackling tenets of storytelling, using fables as the focus, there are so many directions to go in.  It's why Shrek is allowed to have so many personalities in terms of plot.  These are more jabs and parodies of things that have been tried and true and are universal that we don't need a lot of story to explore these ideas.  But the more that Dreamworks mines from the same well, the thinner and less important these commentaries provide.  So Shrek works, not because of story, but because it is a fun poke at the world of fairy tales, especially when it comes to roasting Disney a little bit.  But that's a joke that will probably ultimately get old.  Again, I'm in the future as I write this.  I'm about to start Shrek Forever After, the fourth entry in the franchise.  I can tell you that the joke gets old now.  But for the first movie, it's pretty good.

Also, it's got a good soundtrack that is just concentrated nostalgia.