They’re
back – and so are we! It’s Shrek the funny ogre, and Donkey and Princess
Fiona, raising the curtain on a new movie year after weeks of low-season wheel-spinning
at local cinemas. The posters are up: no longer will the Sunday Mail Film
Page have to retreat into film history to find something to write about. August
is over, and the year’s biggest worldwide hit is in town! To quote Peter
Bradshaw in The Guardian: “You’d have to be a real ogre not to like
it”.
Call
me green and ugly, because I don’t – though at least I like it better than
the original, with its rancid blend of toilet humour, showbiz in-jokes and plug-ugly
animation. The animation is still ugly, but the rest has been toned down a
little, and Antonio Banderas – the most underrated comic actor in Hollywood
– lends his voice to a suave Puss in Boots. The original’s (too) many fart
jokes have been largely replaced by smarter stuff, like the comic bickering
between Shrek and his wife. What was coarse and insufferable is now merely bland
and busy, rapping out jokes with brisk efficiency if little of the zany wit of Toy
Story or The Emperor’s New Groove.
I
realise this must all sound quite puzzling to the film’s many fans, for whom
it’s the best thing since sliced bread; Shrek 2 (like Shrek)
even played in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. “This is comedy talent
so advanced it’s sometimes almost extra-terrestrial,” enthuses Mr. Bradshaw,
and I confess I have no idea what he’s talking about.
In
truth, the biggest (unintentional) joke about Shrek 2 and its predecessor
is the way they push a brave Be-Yourself message – ugly Shrek and his bride
resisting pressure to be conventionally beautiful, remaining ‘special’ in
their own way – while in fact copying and borrowing from absolutely everywhere.
The film has no real identity: it’s a procession of spoofery and name-dropping,
often transplanting showbiz culture to a storybook setting. Thus, for instance,
the Royal ball to which Shrek and Fiona are invited is played like the pre-Oscar
ceremony, with a red carpet and Joan Rivers figure introducing fairytale
characters as they arrive (Sleeping Beauty topples out of her car and falls
asleep on the walkway). The Land of Far, Far Away is a take-off on Hollywood,
with billboards and a sign on a hill.
A
random list of pop-culture references in Shrek 2 might include the upside-down
kiss from Spider-Man; the famous ‘beach scene’ in From Here to
Eternity; the theme to Rawhide; a snatch of Herb Alpert and the
Tijuana Brass; a riff on “We’re not in Kansas anymore” from The Wizard
of Oz; and the break-in through the ceiling from Mission: Impossible.
Sometimes the reference is witty, as when Donkey, lost in the forest, finds a
landmark in “a bush shaped like Shirley Bassey” (it is, too). More often,
the borrowings seem to work in lieu of actual jokes, triggering a kind of
Pavlovian response in the pop-savvy viewer.
It
may seem a strange description for a film that looks like making $1 billion in
the global marketplace, but the best adjective for Shrek 2 is ‘ordinary’.
There are highlights, certainly – a turbulent family dinner, a magic-potion
sweatshop, Jennifer Saunders voicing an evil Fairy Godmother – but also creaky
jokes like Shrek saying “We’re not going, and that’s final!” (guess what
happens next?), not to mention a bland soundtrack with a particularly awful MOR
butchering of David Bowie’s ‘Changes’. In a way it’s typical of the film
as a whole, using a famous song with sky-high pop cachet but softening and
airbrushing it, trying to keep everyone happy: what better way – at least in
theory – of attracting both Bowie and Celine Dion fans, than by making Bowie
sound like Celine Dion?
Clearly, I have Shrek-related Issues; I’m the Man Who Didn’t Get It in an H.M. Bateman cartoon, feeling – to quote David Edelstein in Slate – “like a fat green ogre in a sea of frolicking pixies”. The climax of Shrek 2 features not one but two magic potions, one that’ll make Fiona fall in love with the first man she kisses and one that’ll change Shrek and Fi into beautiful people, but only if they kiss before midnight. It’s designed to offer twice the pleasure and excitement, and I’m sure it does for most people; for me, alas, the two strands just distracted from each other, making it hard – or at least harder – to enjoy one while keeping an eye on the other.
Still, it’s pleasant enough: ogres, kings, a rescue attempt by the Gingerbread Man and the Three Blind Mice. Then of course there’s a happy ending, and everyone sings ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’. “Every millisecond of screen time is saturated with intelligence and invention,” raves Mr. Bradshaw, for whom this is clearly as good as it gets. Looks like it’s going to be a long year.