Shrek (2001)

Shrek (Mike Myers) is a big ogre who lives alone in the woods, feared from all the people in the land of Duloc and he likes it like that. When Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow), the ruler of Duloc, exiles all the fairy-tale beings in the woods, Shrek looses his peaceful life and his home becomes a refugees camp and hilarity ensues. So, he sets out to find Lord Farquaad and convince him to take the fairy-tale beings back where they belong, and leave him alone. Lord Farquaad accepts, under one condition. Shrek must first go and find the beautiful young princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), who will become Farquaad's bride. So, the big Ogre begins his quest, along with his newfound donkey friend (Eddie Murphy). But, as usual nothing is as it seems and you can tell a book by it's cover and a lot of other cliches you can come up with. Fairy tales will never be the same.

Trivia: Chris Farley was originally cast as Shrek and even recorded the dialogue. However, after his death, the role was given to fellow Saturday Night Live performer, Mike Myers. A remnant of Farley remains when Shrek uses "finger quotes" - a trademark of Farley's character Bennett Brower. There are 36 unique locations in Shrek - more than any other computer-animated film at the time. Computer animation production started on the project on 31 October 1996 and took more than four and a half years to complete. The principal actors never met each other. All read their parts separately, with a reader feeding them the lines. In Yiddish, Shrek means monster (from the German for terror or fright). In the fire scene outside of Shrek's house you see Papa Bear comforting Baby Bear... later, in Farquaad's castle as he is watching the picture of Fiona on the mirror you see Mama Bear as a rug, skinned and laying on the floor. Her ultimate fate, however, seems to be ok. She re-appears during the Video & DVD Karaoke scene, dancing with Papa and Baby. Over 1,000 fantasy characters invade Shrek's swamp at the beginning of the movie. Prior to release, the movie was viewed by DreamWork's lawyers, since there were concerns that Disney would sue over the movie's not-so-subtle satirical references to the company's films and theme parks. The scene where Princess Fiona burps was not originally included, and was written only after Cameron Diaz burped after drinking some coke during a recording session.

In anticipation of seeing Shrek The Third this weekend, I rewatched Shrek, and will rewatch Shrek 2 tomorrow. I love this movie. It is great. It's funny characters and not so subtle humor appeals to kids. It's irreverence and subtle references appeals to adults. The amount of references to beloved fairy tale characters and Disney is just mind boggling. I did catch something that I don't remember seeing before. I don't think I am giving anything away by saying that Fiona has a magic spell on her where she is a woman by day and an ogre by night. When Shrek gets Fiona out of the castle and he takes his helmet off (before we know about her magic spell) Fiona says that something is wrong and that "I'm not supposed to be an ogre." The "I'm" is kind of muffled so that it is ambiguous, but her mouth is saying "I'm" not "You're" which I assumed she said. It's one of those nice touches that you catch sometimes when you see a movie again.