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(Originally published by the Daily News on May 16, 2001. This was written byJami Bernard.)
He's a mean, green halitosis machine, but the computer-animated star of "Shrek" can laugh all the way to the mudbank.
This exuberantly irreverent cartoon about a beauty and a beast will be minting green all summer long, and not just from an audience too short to get on the rides.
Among the many reasons why "Shrek" is such heady entertainment is that it represents a leap in computer animation, and the "wow" factor is extraordinary.
Using techniques that individually program the subtle movements of skeleton, muscle, skin and hair, the computer renders human and animal characters with a wealth of emotion, particularly in facial expressions, never seen before in cartoons.
Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) is an ogre with personal-hygiene issues, but it doesn't take long to love him, warts and all. And that's the message of the movie - ugly is in the eye of the beholder.
The movie has another message, one that will sail over the heads of the little ones: A big "nuts to you" from producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, now of DreamWorks, to his former employer, Michael Eisner over at Disney.
New York Daily News published this on May 16, 2001.
New York Daily News published this on May 16, 2001.
(New York Daily News)
The profusion of surgical strikes at the Mouse House is breathtaking. Whether any of this is actionable is for the courts to decide. But in the court of public opinion, it's hilarious, and in today's climate of sarcasm, the barbs don't even seem all that meanspirited.
"Shrek," based on the gooey-creatured children's book by William Steig, is a funnel-eared, stinky creature who knows he's not welcome in polite society. He just wants is to be left alone in his swamp, where he can pop jellied eyeballs like bonbons.
But Shrek has a couple of problems. One is a stubborn, trash-talking donkey (Eddie Murphy) who has latched onto him; the other is the evil Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow), who has dumped all the disenfranchised fairy-tale creatures of the land in Shrek's backyard.
Any similarities between Lord Farquaad and Michael Eisner are presumably intentional.
There are also three bears sleeping in Shrek's bed, a "possessed toy" with a Pinocchio nose camping on his porch, and all the beloved woodland creatures of Disney movies spoiling his view with their squalid refugee camp.
No one has attempted to take the starch out of these beloved icons since the old Warner Bros. cartoons and "Roger Rabbit," and even then, never with such wicked glee.
A scene from Dreamworks computer animated fairy tale "Shrek" is shown in this photo.
(AP)
"Get the dead broad off the table!" barks Shrek when the dwarfs try to set down Snow White's glass bier.
Lord Farquaad makes a deal. If Shrek can deliver the lovely Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from the dragon-guarded tower where she pines, Shrek can have his solitude back. But the princess has real chemistry with the ogre (and a dark secret of her own), and she's a pistol.
The clever script turns the Magic Mirror on the Wall into a "Dating Game" host, and features an unforgettable exchange between Lord Farquaad and the Gingerbread Man that suggests an encounter between Mother Goose and "Marathon Man."
The voice work is stupendous. Myers reprises his Scottish accent from "So I Married an Axe Murderer" and "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" to great comic effect, and Murphy has never been in better form than as "a donkey with an edge."
Some of "Shrek" outdoes "Joe Dirt" in gross-out humor; the candle made of plucked earwax comes to mind. But the brilliance of the voice work, script, direction and animation all serve to make "Shrek" an adorable, infectious work of true sophistication.