Movie Review: Shrek 2

[yesthattom]

I saw it on the airplane to Florida over a week ago and I’m just now thinking to post a review. That should show how excited I am about this film. Shrek 1 was a funny, wonderful, fractured-fairytale. This one was just sort of “there.” Nothing really innovative in the CGI department, and the writing was ok. I’m sure it would have been better if I wasn’t watching it on a LCD-screen on an airplane, but...

Comments

[freeko.livejournal.com]

Well of course, while Shrek was OK. It made shitloads of money that Dreamworks could make a franchise out of it. Hence we have Shrek 2 and all the inevitable sequels as well as videogames, DVD's with extra's, marketing tie-ins and more formulaic sequels. I fucking hate franchise films. They take up too much space in movie screens and keep real good films from hitting the screens.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

I'm pleased that the movie kept my work-neighbors employed...but that's about it.

Have to disagree

[sjthespian.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'm a bit biased since I worked on the film, but I have to disagree with you. There were plenty of advances in this film, look at the lighting (global illumination), skin tones, rain, and the crowd scenes. Not to mention this movie having a *much* stronger story than the first and enough levels that it appealed to both the kids and the adults in the audience. Go get a copy of the DVD and watch it on a screen bigger than a postage stamp. Watch for some of the details, the shop signs in Far Far Away, individual reactions and look of the people in the crowd in front of the castle, the individual leaves in the trees reacting to the raindrops in the storm, etc.

And most importantly -- find my name burried in the credits! :)

Re: Have to disagree

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realized you worked on it! Now I'll have to go watch it on a bigger screen. I think a lot of my disappointment was watching it on a tiny LCD screen on the airplane.

Tom

Also disagreeing

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Technical improvements aside, I quite liked the first Shrek film (even though it
took some large strides away from the book that inspired it). It was a good
story, with engaging characters and complex multi-level humour. I didn't
have high hopes for the sequel, figuring it would be a formulaic re-hash
(Iike Legally Blonde 2), and fail to maintain the fine humour of the first one.
And I was wrong! The second film continued the story in a thoroughly
entertaining way, and actually maintained the wonderful quirky complex
humour of the first.

As to freeko's charge of mass-market films crowding out
"real good" films, that's not the fault of the mass-market films. That's
the fault of theatre operators who show the same exact damn thing
as the theatre next door. Luckily for me, I live near an art theatre,
which does show non-mainstream films.

Re: Also disagreeing

[awfief.livejournal.com]

I agree with madbodger. Also, I thought it was still very funny, and thematic with the fairy tale jokes. Every time I see it I see another name of a store in far far away that makes me smile, or some little detail. I thought the wet hair stuff was great, but maybe that was also in Shrek 1?

As a movie, this could have stood alone on its own merits as a movie. That's how I judge a sequel, and this one passed. Very few do.

As well, I will say -- I didn't find it IMPRESSIVE. But that doesn't mean that I found it boring. I found it classic. Roald Dahl's "James and the Giant Peach" and "Charlotte's Web" don't impress me, either, but they are damn fine books.