Ogres are Jokers. Review on Shrek Movie

With my parents having a fixation for allowing me to watch only very few movies and those few also with not real people on the screen, this was one of the only few movies that I could watch at home without having to switch channels every thirty-six seconds pretending a channel scan. Like a devout fun-maker does, I stuck to this and held on to it as hard as I could. I watched the movie each time it aired on TV and aired more than often a few months ago.

Fairy tales and I have never mixed, not even when I was three and couldn't say Fairy, myself having a fixation for the more thoughtful kind of writing; I used to read the appendix to every book. So when I switched the TV on to watch this movie for the first time I did so with something of a prejudice. I was sure I was not going to like the movie one bit.

It was almost like Geoffrey Boycott sitting down in the commentary box watching a match between India and West Indies and saying, ''This match will be won by the team who commits the least number of mistakes.'' (What turned out was that the match was started with 315 by WI and then won by India scoring 316 for 5). Mistakes anyone?

The Review At Last

Most Cartoon films have this serious obligation of catering to little children and therefore are in strong need for humourous content. It is unfair to therefore call Prince of Egypt and Spirit and Anastasia cartoon films because when I watched each one of them, the romantic creep in me began crawling. Cartoon films that are cartoon films usually keep crawling things out of the living room.

The Blokes in the Movie

In each of my review so far, this field has been for assessing the caste performance. Now, Shrek the poor movie doesn't have a cast that performed. But in a sense, you can say that the caste performance was, erm, animated? (I hope most of you get this punchline).

You have this Shrek a green ogre who's smelly but does not smell, whose slimy but does not drip, is dirty but has shiny skin, who can pull out ear wax and light a candle, who can go on poison-fishing trips with fart constituting his poison and who can beat a team of armoured men with a donkey monkeying around.

Then you have this donkey who's voice is from Eddie Murphy, who doesn't understand what Shrek means by 'Ogres have onions- they have layers', who thinks brimstone isn't brimstone but is the poison Shrek uses to catch fish, who thinks muffins are the tastiest things on the whole damn planet, who will shut up only if Advocatus Diaboli stands before him, who has a dragon for a girlfriend, who is tossed in the air four storeys high and lands on his backside as the Ogre runs into the chapel and who is instrumental in bringing Phiona, the princess, and Shrek together.

You have this Princess Phiona who is the regular bossing around, temperamental, sweet and pretty, exasperating type princess, who is a princess but not a princess but a half-ogre owing to a curse, who falls in love with Shrek who is so ovbvioulsy seventy-six times uglier than her by-day looks, who yanks an arrow out of Shrek's behind without him realizing anything, who thrases a bunch of forest looters Bruce Lee-style (though the scene is cut the Matrix Style) and who finally marries Shrek to live happily every after.

Then you have this Lord Unspellable (that's how I find his real name, excuse me) who selects his would-be wife by way of a magic mirror who doesn't tell him he is the greatest king in the world, who is as tall as my gum boots, who'se crown would cover him completely if it was pressed on his head a bit and who finally finds his resting place in the gastric environment of a Dragon.

And then you have the ginger-lame man and the seven dwarves and a host of other insignificant fairy tale creatures and characters who set up a ghetto in ''mai swaamp'' as Shrek yells at them.

The Movie

The story of the movie is a mixture of umpteen number of fairy tales mixed together thanks to this Lord Unspellable. It is a mixture of wonderfull cartoon humour and thrilling cartoon action and sweet cartoon romance, with a mix of the Lord's cartoon evil and cartoon selifshness and the dragon cartoon dreadfulness and the Donkey's cartoon romance of his cartoon own and whole lot of other cartoon stuff describing which will make look like a carton (pant… pant… pant…)!

To make matters even worse you have the Eddie Murphy voice and the Mike Myers voice and the Cameron Diaz voice which somehow create a peculiar mixture of voices giving it a little bit of further cartoon ''cartoonity'' if you allow me to call it.

With those long toadstools-with-hollow-end shaped years and teeth that are full of green plaque (how's that?), Shrek the Ogre doesn't look so ugly at all. In fact he looks like the cudliest cartoon monster I've seen yet! I suppose it was a part of the movie-makers' plans to make Shrek look like a monster who doesn't look like a monster and donkey look like a donkey who does look like a donkey and Phiona a princess who certainly doesn't look like a princess all the time.

In Conclusion

If you watch the Shrek, you certain to get a few things which are these. First of all, you'll get to watch a cartoon movie which is something even your wife won't mind if you do on the anniversary you didn't remember. Then, you'll certainly be able to coax her to watch it with you unintentionally making her feel you remembered the anniversary and have found a cute and sweet way of celebrating it (when in doubt by a Coke). The third thing is, you'll have a lot of laughs in the house which would certainly be a relieving thing to have on a missed anniversary.

A missed anniversary not being the essential prerequisite for watching the movie. You can do that on those you genuinely do remember.

If I were to be clear, which I usually am little, I can say just one thing: watch it, onion boy!