It's ultimately a film about inner beauty and how meaningful relationships always take genuine effort. By turning all the Disney tropes on their heads, Shrek challenges the false expectations that the company offers in terms of romance, gender politics and agency. But for whatever reason, all of these arch decisions about character an narrative end up creating a film with genuine heart. In any other instance, this amount of bitterness would create a film that was rankly mean-spirited. Not only is Lord Farquaad modelled on Eisner (at least, as Katzenberg saw him), but his very name is a subtle insult aimed squarely at the Disney boss.
When Katzenberg was forced to resign from Disney in 1994, he channeled his resentment into a film which challenged Disney's values while attempting to steal their target audience. Much of Shrek's origins, outside of William Steig's novel, lie in the fall-out between Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner. And our main characters don't settle for a life of luxury in a castle far away, but end up living in a swamp. The villain isn't a spiteful sorceress or a vain queen, but a powerful king - the character most likely to be trusted in a Disney film. Our princess is not a china doll incapable of defending or thinking for herself, but a strong-willed, hot-headed and very rounded character. Our hero is not a chisel-jawed, pleasantly dull prince, but a grumpy, cantakerous and often selfish ogre. But it also works as a straight-up fairy tale in its own right, for when you're not in the mood for deconstructing conventions or ribbing Disney.Įven in the context of other postmodern fantasies of the time, Shrek is a very comprehensive subversion of the classic Disney fairy tale. Even after fourteen years and all its sequels, the film still has an edgy quality in the way that it subverts, questions or dismantles fairy tale tropes. Shrek succeeds where The Princess Bride was ultimately indecisive, striking a near-perfect balance between celebrating fairy tales and taking the piss out of them. But Shrek actually works for a very different reason: it keeps the children at the forefront of its mind, and uses its more grown-up moments to stretch them rather than to pander to their parents.
Even with the huge success of Antz, the company was still finding its feet in a marketplace where CG animation was still something of a novelty. It would be easy to excuse Shrek of this indictment because it came from a time before Dreamworks was the PIXAR-rivalling behemoth that it is now. Fox - but they are the most consistent and successful offender. Dreamworks are not alone in this regard - see also Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. jokes about The Godfather and Goodfellas in Shark Tale). fart jokes) and on another for the paying adults (e.g. While many of the greatest family films ever made operate on the same level for adults and children, many of Dreamworks' offerings have been structured to deliberately work on one level for young children (e.g. When I reviewed Despicable Me, I took Dreamworks to task in its notion of what constituted a family film. But even outside of its reputation, it's a truly great film and is, with its sequel, arguably the best thing that Dreamworks has ever made. Taken as part and parcel of its reputation, it's easy to hold the first Shrek (and by extension Shrek 2) in high regard, only because the later instalments were not as good. We find ourselves in a similar position with the Shrek series, which depending on your view is either the jewel in Dreamworks' crown or a sad indictment of how Jeffrey Katzenberg cynically squeezes all the creativity out of what was once a good idea.
Indiana Jones is as central a part of our filmmaking culture as Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, and all too often we find ourselves simply reiterating platitudes about their reputations, rather than examining them in detail.
#SHREK CHARACTERS SERIES#
In my review of Raiders of the Lost Ark, I spoke about how the cultural indelibilty of a film, series or character can often lead us to forget how good or bad the individual instalments are.