"Once upon a time" is the opening line of every fairy tale, and "Shrek" is no exception. As a matter of fact, the movie opens with Shrek, the main character in the movie, reading out of a fairy tale book about a beautiful princess stranded in a castle, guarded by a dragon, and awaiting true love to save her. Of course, the fact that Shrek later uses these same fairy tale pages in place of toilet paper immediately tells you that you should expect more of the movie than your typical fairy tale humor.
Shrek is the name of an ogre who lives privately in a swamp surrounded by "Keep Out" signs. He is a very lonely creature with an inferiority complex due to his ugliness. He lives a solitary life that is occasionally interrupted by men with torches who try unsuccessfully to capture him. But he is not really the scary creature that everyone thinks him to be; rather he is a creature with a big heart, but without a chance to show it. Shrek’s voice-over is nicely done by Mike Myers (from "Austin Powers") in a Scottish accent.
Shrek’s life begins to move to the outside world when the solitude of his swamp is disturbed by a sudden invasion of cartoon creatures, who have been banished from the Kingdom ruled by Lord Farquaad, voiced by John Lithgow ("Third Rock From The Sun"). The ogre comes out to find his home infested with characters from the big bad wolf to Pinocchio, while the Magic Mirror is tortured by Farquaad in order to find the princess who he must wed to become a true king. His choices are Cinderella, Snow White and Princess Fiona. However, since Farquaad is not really eager to slay the dragon that stands between them himself, he hires Shrek to save her in return for giving him his swamp back as it was before.
Another delightful character responsible for the best laughs in the movie goes along for the trip to save the princess. He is a talking, and sometimes even flying donkey, named the "Donkey" who is voiced by Eddie Murphy. After Shrek gets to Princess Fiona (voiced by Cameron Diaz) with Donkey, she observes that "He talks!?" But the ogre who was not really fond of that particular Donkey feature replays: "Yeh! Getting him to shut up is the trick!"
"Shrek" is a jolly movie that is very entertaining and a lot of fun to watch. It was created by DreamWorks and is not based on a true story — just in case you were wondering! But it is based on the book by William Steig and written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman and Roger Schulman. "Shrek" is directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson with the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and John Lithgow.
