When DreamWorks SKG released Shrek in 2001, it finally proved that it could stand in the same ring with Disney/Pixar, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the computer-animated film world. (In fact, Shrek narrowly out-grossed Pixar’s Monsters Inc., released the same year.) Disney/Pixar’s counterpunch came last year, when Finding Nemo became the highest-grossing animated film ever. But just when you thought DreamWorks was on the ropes, they bounce back with Shrek 2, the best animated sequel since Pixar’s Toy Story 2.
Boxing metaphors aside, Shrek 2 owes its quality to more than just a strong competitor. The humour works on at least two different levels, from the kid-friendly fart jokes to visual quotes of films as diverse as The Princess Bride, Alien and Spider-Man. The Disney/Pixar team has been extremely successful at this kind of thing (and the first Shrek was as much an imitation of that successful formula as a parody of it), but Shrek 2 takes things to a new level of sustained hilarity. Visual gags abound, and many of them are easy to miss the first time around. This is a film that will make parents actually want to drag their progeny to overcrowded multiplexes to see it again.
The story is equally outstanding. When we last saw Shrek (Mike Myers) and his lady Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), they were going to live happily ever after as ogre and wife. The sequel kicks off with a honeymoon montage before getting down to an engaging plot that sees Shrek, his donkey sidekick (Eddie Murphy) and the now permanently ogrish Fiona travel to “Far Far Away” to meet Fiona’s parents. The catch is that the king and queen are expecting someone a little more, shall we say, charming. Enter a scheming fairy godmother (voiced by Ab-Fab’s Jennifer Saunders with just the right note of matronly malice) and her handsome cad of a son, and the stage is set for some marital discord between the newlyweds.
Between that and the twisted-fairytale premise of the original, Shrek 2 is rife with comedic possibility, and it never disappoints. Whereas the first Shrek took satiric aim mainly at Disney, Shrek 2 casts a wide net across corporatized, celebrity-obsessed America, from Hollywood to Starbuck’s and Burger King. The result is one of those rare sequels that is better in every way than the first film: it’s better looking, faster paced, more consistently clever and unrelentingly funny. And with so many good jokes coming so fast, the embedded be-happy-in-your-own-skin moral goes down like a tasty chewable vitamin. In other words, Shrek 2 is worth seeing whether you’re a child, a parent or anyone else.
(3.5/4)