Brehm Center

We are standing in line—a line that wraps around the theater—with lots of excited kids and their parents. Why? Shrek 2 is showing!  Both screenings this night are sold out in the historic movie house that holds 400 people.  And we aren’t in our neck of the woods, Hollywood’s backyard (where we’d also seen it with a packed house); we are in Skowhegan, Maine, population 8800. 

The wide appeal of Shrek 2, both in urban Los Angeles and in small town Maine, was born out nationwide.  Opening weekend polling indicated that 60 percent of the sales came from families, with almost equal numbers of boys and girls under twelve in attendance.  And in subsequent weeks Shrek, the green ogre, continued to surpass even Brad Pitt in Troy and Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing.  Peter Travers of “Rolling Stone” magazine declared that the movie’s “heart and glorious sense of mischief make it one of the best and most humane movies of the summer.”

So what gives and should you see this animated feature?  We join our voices with most others in recommending Shrek 2 to both children and adults alike. In the last several years film animation has often surpassed live action features, especially in its visual beauty, its ingenuity and its clever (and mostly clean) humor. Other recent examples worth seeing are Finding Nemo, The Triplets of Bellville (for adults) and Spirited Away (see our review of Nov. 2003).  Shrek 2 will fascinate and delight kids with its winsome characters and fairy tale plot, while adults will enjoy the references to past movies and the good-natured poke at Hollywood and Southern California culture.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  First we should recall the story of Shrek, the green hero (voiced by Mike Myers).  In the first film, Fiona (voiced by Cameron Diaz) had been taken captive by a dragon. Her only salvation was for someone to slay the dragon, and she to be kissed by the dragon-slayer.  Though some thought that would be Prince Charming (voiced by Rupert Everett), he arrived too late.  Shrek, the kindly ogre had already slain the beast and wed the princess. Shrek’s kiss however transformed Fiona from her petite princess stature to a broad and green “ogrette.”

As Shrek 2 opens, the unlikely couple is trying to settle into married bliss. However, Shrek and his bride are interrupted by Shrek’s buddy, Donkey (voiced by Eddie Murphy), and a messenger from Fiona’s parents.  The royal parents (voiced by John Cleese and Julie Andrews) want the couple to return to their kingdom “Far Far Away” (a caricatured Los Angeles with designer shopping malls and palm trees) so they can meet their new son-in-law.  Shocked by the turn of events, Prince Charming’s mother, the nasty Fairy Godmother (voiced by Jennifer Saunders), and the King conspire to get rid of Shrek.  They engage the services of a bounty hunter, Puss-in-Boots (hilariously voiced by Antonio Banderas), only for him to be won over to Shrek’s side of the battle.  Thus, the story twists and turns with Shrek and Fiona trying to reach Fiona’s parents with the truth of their love, regardless of their shape or color.  Soon all are faced with the choice between love and physical appearances (even the King and Queen).  And as you might expect this fairy tale ends happily ever after, even if in its own way. 

While on the surface the movie’s goal may be to enchant children with a riff on an old-fashioned fairy tale, it also engages adults by good-humoredly poking fun at some of the premises of their childhood stories and nursery rhymes (Who really is our “Prince Charming”?).  Shrek 2 is riddled with pop culture jokes (for example, Joan Rivers at the Oscars) and allusions to past silver screen moments (From Here to Eternity, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Zorro, The Little Mermaid, Spiderman, Star Trek, Beauty and the Beast, Rawhide, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Mission Impossible, and Lord of the Rings, just to name a few).

In a culture where even little girls are modeling themselves after Britney Spears and Cristina Aguilera, we hardly want to quarrel with a story that promotes the beauty of the plump and different-looking. We are reminded of the “beloved” in the Song of Songs. Though weathered by the sun from work in the vineyards, she is nonetheless thought beautiful, “truly lovely,” by her lover. She is for him “a lily among brambles.” (Song of Songs 1: 5-6, 16; 2: 2). Like the Song of Songs, Shrek 2 encourages us to believe that we can be loved for who we are.  If Fiona can see beyond the stereotype of Prince Charming and choose to “live happily ever after with the ogre I married,” then maybe our kids (and we adults!) can learn that they are loved for who they are…by us their parents, by extended family and friends…and most of all by Jesus.