Shrek reviewed

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

Shrek

It is still early in the summer, but I’m betting that the most surprising film of the season will be Shrek, a fairy tale for a post-fairy tale age, a sort of Babe in South Park, with more than a hint of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers), the leading ogre, enjoys nothing so much as a mud bath in real (almost live) mud and his peace and quiet until the evil Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow), in a weird sort of urban renewal, banishes a motley, rather politically incorrect assortment of dwarves, blind mice, narcoleptic beauties, Snow White (yeah, you know, she lives with seven men), and one brash talking (even trash-talking) donkey (Eddie Murphy, who proves he not only can talk to the animals, he can talk like an animal, as he did in Mulan). And then, poor Shrek (in a kind of Mission Impossible venture for which Myers’s Austin Powers voice is appropriate) has to rescue the fair Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz, playing Cameron Diaz, if Cameron Diaz were ever to find herself caught between an ogre and a dragon).

Shrek has some of the best computer animation I’ve seen lately, with especially moving facial expressions and downright eerie landscapes. The world of Shrek is a world complete and consistent within itself, no matter how far-fetched it may seem from the perspective of our world. The script has the sort of problem that I find with many children’s films these days: if I were a parent, I’m not sure that I would want my children to hear some of these lines. But, considering how much of the more adult side of the humor the kids in the audience with me picked up on, maybe I’m out of touch.

I can say that this more or less adult found himself captivated by just about every one of the eighty-nine minutes of Shrek—in spite of the kids crowding the theater with me. (Sometimes, I think that really good kiddy films like this are too good to be wasted on the kids.)

Lithgow, Diaz, and Myers bring a rich humanity to their portrayals. I mean this as a real compliment to Murphy to say that, if a donkey could talk, this has to be how it would sound.

A bit of a footnote: Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks used to be a Disney honcho, and he seems to get some pleasure in this film by taking some shots of “beloved” Disney characters and a wicked look at a theme park that seems annoyingly similar to…. Oh, well, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. But, it is funny, just twisted enough to be cool enough to be a welcome addition to this hot, muggy season.