Review : Shrek

Shrek : The film that no one saw coming. The fairly unlike any other told before. Shrek is an ogre who lives happily and peacefully in his swamp and when his peace is disturbed, he sets off on an adventure to rescue a princess in exchange to get his swamp back.

Hey Film Lovers

Hope you all had a good Bank Holiday Weekend, Now we're back to business again. Today I'm talking about Shrek. The idea behind this film is great, I honestly could not believe it when I saw it, It was one of those films I always grew up liking and enjoying. It's such a clever story where instead of a handsome prince as the hero Dreamworks has thought 'You know what? we're sick of handsome princes and so on why not be diverse and think outside the box' and they did. They made Shrek - The main character and title character an ogre.

What I love about Shrek is, he's a character who doesn't want to be the hero, he's not bothered about going off an fighting dragons and being friends with a talking donkey. He just wants to live on his own in his swamp. That's all there is to his character in this film, The swamp is so valuable to him, he'd go to such lengths to get it back, but as he goes about doing this he falls in love with the fair Princess Fiona, who is also an Ogre (but only by night) So it begs the question, how can all this be plausible. The ogre is meant to be the bad guy and the handsome prince gets the girl? Shrek is just an example of story telling which implies that that's not always how it goes. There's other diversities to a fairy tale then that. In fact this is shown in the film, where Shrek is reading the story book and he rips the page out and dismisses the statement of a 'happily ever after'.

The film is very funny, and one for many a laugh because Shrek is very funny, Donkey is very funny The jokes that are made, and the mickey taking of other fairy tale stories are all coherent and current and all work well. So delivering good sizable laughter isn't a big deal, it's melodramatic comedy which knows is a comedy and plays on it's laughs, sometimes the laughs are there, sometime they are not. That's how it goes.

I think what I have always liked about all of the Shrek films, not just the first one is the fact that they are so different. They stand out on a very fine line of being entertaining and funny, never shying away from being anything but a good watch.

The only problems with it is looking at the first Shrek film constructively, It doesn't stand up very well to other traditional fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White for example. I mean those characters are in the Shrek films, but I think they only work within the realms of Shrek, you can see Shrek molding into the more traditional stories.

And controversially you do watch Shrek today and wonder wither or not it's a bit dated. It's noticeable now because Shrek is such a well known character amongst the public. So I am concerned that from what can be done now in CG Animation and you look at Shrek and put two and two together, yeah Shrek is abit dated and has its restrictions in film techniques, in terms of live action, graphic imagery and finer detail but that's just because it was made back when it was made.

Not to mention the musical, which is not terrible, but not great either it's sort of in between and very cheesy.

Overall, Shrek 1 is a very good film indeed, very enjoyable and imaginative - 7/10.