I Watch Films: Shrek

 

Shrek

Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) is an ogre who lives in a swamp and doesn’t want to be disturbed. He accidentally rescues a talking donkey called Donkey (Eddie Murphy) from Lord Farquaad’s men, and reluctantly lets him stay. However his swamp is then filled with fairytale creatures (blind mice, big bad wolf, gingerbread men etc) driven their by Lord Farquaad who wants to make his lands more normal.

Lord Farquaad wants to be a king, and his magic mirror says that the way to do that is to marry a princess; he picks the Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), not asking what her curse is, but knowing she needs to be rescued from a dragon-guarded tower. He declares a tournament to find a champion. Shrek and Donkey arrive to complain about all the creatures in his swamp; Lord Farquaad says that whoever beats Shrek will be champion. Shrek and Donkey beat them and Lord Farquaad promises to clear out the swamp if Shrek returns with Princess Fiona.

They succeed, though Fiona is taken by surprise at how things are not going as expected, and Dragon falls in love with Donkey. It turns out Fiona’s curse is to turn into an ogre at night. Only true love’s kiss will break the curse. The rest is fairly predictable; misunderstandings between Shrek and Fiona, Fiona coming to the realisation that Farquaad isn’t in love, he just wants to be king, an interrupted wedding etc.

It's still fun and funny. Some of the CGI doesn’t quite stand up, but the characters are all good, the sly jokes for adults entertaining and the villain extremely unlikeable.

Watch This: Extremely fun family-friendly fairytale themed adventure
Don’t Watch This: All very post-modern ironic takes on fairytales while not really subverting the Beauty And The Beast plot at the heart of it