journal features

movie review - Shrek

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Vancouver, 2001.08.31

I was disppointed by this one. But, I suppose you get what you pay for.

The story was disturbingly pat, the animation a touch out-dated, and the characters couldn't find a place between raunchy caricatures and realistic people.

I'd heard that Shrek was supposed to lampoon a lot of teh old fairy tale shtick, but I suspect they were trying to dumb the whole thing down for the kids, because the humour had a pacing that seemed a touch too slow (of course, that might have been the nature of the medium). But even the voices were a little underwhelming. Murphy and What's-her-name were just using their own voices, while Meyers's accent wobbled all over the North Atlantic in an annoying fashion.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton