Reviews:Shrek

From the earliest screens I've seen from Shrek, I've been anticipating this film. Besides the unique computer animation that brings this film to life, it features Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, John Lithgow, and Cameron Diaz (See A Life Less Ordinary for a cool Diaz flick). But can it live up to the month long advertising blitz that has been oozing from every flat surface for the last month? Or will it just be a big pile of crap. Well I was there opening night, and you can read my review, complete with minimal spoilers and bad jokes. First things first, I'm a Disney Junkey. I like cheesy kids movies. Tarzan. Aladdin. Toy Story. Fantasia. Jungle Book. I think that children's stories have the potential to be the best of all worlds. "Adult" movies like to get bogged down by being deep and philisophical. Children's stories can get by with a thin plot, and happy gags. Throw in amazing visuals and a few musical numbers, and you've got the formula for almost every animated movie America has given us since Walt coughed up Snow White. So keep all of this in mind as I tell you why I like this movie.

Shrek is to Fairy Tales what Who Framed Roger Rabbit is to Cartoons. Mike Meyers is Shrek, the grumpy ogre who is deep down, a good guy. Eddie Murphy is the wise cracking sidekick: in this film, a donkey (not to be confused with the wise cracking insect he voiced in Mulan). The world is laden with fairy tale lore: From Cinderella to Snow White. From Peter Pan to Robin Hood. From Goldilocks to the Three Bears. They're all here for random visual gags in this messed up world.

Of course we need a Villian: John Lithgow is the would-be King who needs only a Princess to achieve his goal of the perfect kingdom. Of course, his perfect kingdom is a warped disneyland style castle (complete with velvet rope waiting lines at the front door). Oh, have I mentioned that he's ridiculously short? He finds the Magic Mirror (totally visually snagged from Disney's Snow White) and uses it to find his princess. And Shrek is gonna go get it, in exchange for the rights to keep all those obnoxious fairy tale bastards out of his beloved swamp.

So of course there's a dragon, and a valiant rescue of the princess. There's banter between our Ogre hero, and his sidekick. There's love shared between the beautiful princess and the hideous ogre. But how can they be together when they aren't even the same species?!

So thats the plot. Its cheesy, and you've heard it before, but there's no need to let that bother you. You're really seeing this movie for the ride, and what a ride it is. Jokes are packed fairly tightly, and with a good range of target audience. Of course there are the obligatory fart jokes, to say nothing of referring to the Donkey by his 3-letter name which is going to get laughs out of all the 9 year olds who heard a dirty word. But there's other stuff too: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Matrix, and many more are given parody sequences. Of course the classic Disney movies are also given their fair shakes: the Princess nicely sings to the birds just like Snow White, but with slightly different (and truly warped) end results.

So here's the thing: the jokes are evenly spaced and vary in nature. And the best of them are absolutely awesome. The 9-year-old-boy jokes are there, but I can overlook them (ok, I laughed at a few of them). But I got a lot of good laughs out of it.

And finally, what sort of review of the latest computer animated flick is complete without a discussion of what it looks like: In short, it looks damn fine, but it was a fairly incremental step in terms of rendering and animation.

Much of the animation is really good. As with every CGI flick so far, the humans aren't quite right yet. The Princess is the best of the human characters, and she's usually pretty dead on accurate: but she always looks animated. Occasionally she breaks through at looks alive, but usually she's just almost but not quite. Don't get me wrong: convincingly animating a human in CGI is a task that so far has never been done on film to my liking. Thats why all the successful human's have been the more cartoony (Geri from Geri's game might be the best). The facial stuff is a step ahead of body language. It's just so close.

The animation on the other characters is more varied. Shrek is awesome. Convincingly animated: he has mass, he shows emotion, he moves just like you'd expect. The Donkey works most of the time, but animating a quadroped is a little harder and sometimes he just doesn't move quite right. Our antagonist is extremely well handled: the face is awesome and totally on the money, although he does move just a little awkward. The Dragon is awesome- she's handled amazingly and whoever animated her deserves mega props too: when she's bad she's so bad, and the way they handle her through the rest of the story is great.

This is nitpicking I know, and understand that I'm super picky about this stuff. Nobody has got it perfect yet, and Shrek has got as close as anyone. We'll see what Final Fantasy can do when it comes out.

The overall look of the film is quite different from what we've seen so far. They obviously have tried to capture the look of a fairy tale. Toy Story sorta revels in the fact that its computer animation. Bug's Life really feels gigantic. Antz felt more stripped down, and I feel like Shrek follows somewhat in Antz footsteps. They use a lot of matte paintings which tends to have a different feel to most of the other CG flicks we've seen which are fully 3D. Its certainly not every shot, but its obvious that they aimed for a "Look" with this film, but I felt like that look was in many ways accomplished by giving the film a claustrophobic feel. There's a lot of shots that feel flat. They look like they were shot on a sound stage. Thats partially the lighting, and partially the matte work, but mostly it seemed to me that its because they wanted things to look like those paintings that you see of fairy tale worlds.

They make up for it in other ways tho: the details in many scenes is simply extraordinary: the sheen on the princess's hair. The countless blades of grass blowing independantly in the breeze, getting bent by the donkey passing through them, the leaves in the trees. The landscape is absolutely gorgeous with a stunning level of detail. Its obvious that many of these shots were a labor of love.

The acting is solid across the board. Cameron Diaz gives a good performance (again, watch A Life Less Ordinary to see her in a really good flick). Lithgow is excellent as always (but I actually really dig him: while I don't like 3rd Rock all that much, he manages to really shine). Eddie Murphy plays Eddie Murphy, what do you want? Mike Meyers actually manages to break a bit out of his persona and Act a bit. Should Austin Powers 3 not make him a billionaire, I'd love to see him do voice work- he has a real knack for a variety of characterizations. He makes me super envious since being a voice for a cartoon character is one of my lifelong dreams, and he does it really well. Sometimes Shrek slips a bit of Mike Meyers into himself, but for the most part he stands on his own- especially impressive considering it looks like they snarfed a lot of Meyers reference footage for the animators. Same goes for lithgow. They really got the look of the actors into these characters. Very cool.

So in summary, it's a funny film. Although it's a bit short, thats not surprising: kids have no attention span anyway. The jokes vary, but the best of the jokes are truly sick and twisted. References litter the landscape, and most of them are awesome. Visually the film breaks some new ground, but mostly manages to achieve a unique look. And dammit we're just talking about 70 minutes of fun. Enjoy it. I sure did.

Comments

Digital projection in San Francisco

[ciurana]

Greetings!

For those of you who live in San Francisco or close by in the Bay Area, Shreck is playing in full digital projection format at the AMC 1000 Van Ness theatres. I saw it there last night. Watching the film so clearly was awesome.

Cheers!

E

Thank you CMDR TACO!!

[vandelais]

for not going to see the film with John Katz. That's all. Award Karma accordingly.

The Limits of CG

[tb3]

As with every CGI flick so far, the humans aren't quite right yet.

According to The Tech of Shrek on Tech TV, the princess initially looked too human, so she looked out of place in the fantasy setting. So, they simplified the animation to make her look more 'cartoony'.
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