The only way Shrek will get his peaceful swamp back is to confront Lord Farquaad. Farquaad is a tiny guy, short in stature but with a really tall castle (the source of a few compensation jokes by Shrek). The interior entry area of the castle looks a whole lot like Disneyland's Main Street. That's not the end of the Disney similarity - dolls dance to a tune that's similar to “It's a Small World” and equally annoying - but I'm digressing. Shrek and Donkey arrive at the castle during a competition between Farquaad's knights. In order to become a King, Farquaad must marry a princess. In a parody of “The Dating Game,” Farquaad selected his bride-to-be and chose the lovely Princess Fiona (voiced by Cameron Diaz). One catch, she's trapped in a tower guarded by a fire-eating dragon. Farquaad's solution is to send his bravest knight out to rescue the Princess and slay the dragon. Shrek's presence at the competition takes on a WWF tone. Knights are tossed, slammed, and beaten with chairs. Shrek, the victor, wins the right to rescue the Princess. Shrek and his trusty wisecracking buddy, Donkey, set out on their quest. What ensues is some very hilarious, smart and witty dialogue featuring purloined lines and scenes from other movies (the line from “Babe” had me choking on my popcorn).

The audience actually clapped at the end. Taking into consideration the price of movie tickets, popcorn, and other munchies, clapping at the end of a movie is a sign of a good flick. Shrek was a thoroughly enjoyable fairy tale with adult overtones. I loved the jabs at Disney, and the adult jokes that went over the heads of the younger audience. Now, if I could only get Eddie Murphy's version of “You've Got to Have Friends” out of my head… Rated PG for mild language and some crude humor. Released on May 16 in NY and LA, and nationwide on May 18, 2001. Shrek brought in $42.3 million during its first opening weekend.

Director: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson
Executive Producers: Sandra Rabins, Penney Finkelman Cox, and David Lipman
Screenplay: Ted Elliott
Original Book: William Steig
Director of Photography: Piotr Sobocinski
Film Editor: Sim Evans-Jones
Production Management: Mitchell Ferm and Triva von Klark
Casting: Leslee Feldman
Original Music: Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, and James McKee Smith

Voices:
Shrek - Michael Myers
Princess Fiona - Cameron Diaz
Donkey - Eddie Murphy
Lord Farquaad - John Lithgow

"Shrek" DVD Review/Recommendation
Despite the fact the lead character is a smelly green ogre, “Shrek” is a beautiful fairy tale love story. Not your ordinary tale of a princess in distress, in this version the princess' would-be rescuer lives in a swamp, eats disgusting bugs, and would rather just be left alone. He's forced into rescuing the princess after all sorts of fairy tale creatures invade his secluded little piece of paradise. Accompanied by his new pal, Donkey, Shrek becomes something he never dreamed of being - a romantic hero.
Loaded with extras, “Shrek's” DVD is an amazing collection of interactive games that can be played through your DVD player and over the Internet, while adults will enjoy watching the behind-the-scenes features on the technical aspects of this computer generated film.

Adamson chose to replace the earlier tournament scene with the WWF spoof because to add the wrestling sequence to the already scripted competition would have made the scene too long. "If you're doing comedy and parody, you want to stick to one idea to keep it clean," Adamson said. "We felt like that sequence worked best as mainly a WWF parody. [Before], it was basically just a whole lot of gags around traditional tournament ideas; guys coming out jousting and Shrek grabbing the jousting poll and flipping them over. He would have still done the thing where he knocked the spickett out of the ale keg and turned the whole field to mud, and we had him waterskiing, or mudskiing, behind one of the horses holding onto the horse's tail. It's an aesthetic choice you make as you're going."

The filmmakers also cut a lot of cameos from famous fairy tale characters from the early storyboard scripts. In the beginning of the movie when Shrek scares off a gang of ogre hunters, he was originally supposed to encounter Mary searching for her lost lamb. Jenson said Mary got cut to simplify the introduction of the fairy tale subplot. "We knew we wanted to establish him as a loner and not wanting anyone on his land, but it just seemed cleaner to have humans come in trying to hunt him and the fairy tale creatures getting introduced when they're dumped onto his swamp," she said. The scene of fairy tale characters in the swamp also included some extra gags in earlier script drafts. According to Adamson, Goldilocks had been considered, but in the final film the three bears appear without her. Another gag involving Jack and the Beanstalk had to go because it interfered with the scenery. "Shrek at one stage had come out of the swamp and knocked over a farmer with a cow and the beans fall on the ground and the beanstalk grew throughout the sequence," Adamson explained. "Then at the end he was walking away and behind him you saw this giant fall and land on his house. Without turning around Shrek just said, 'I don't even want to know' and just carried on walking. We cut that obviously because we wanted to leave his house intact."

There were also more fairy tale encounters as Shrek and Donkey escorted Fiona back to Farquaad's castle. Jenson described a proposed encounter with the witch from the Hansel and Gretyl story. "We had at one point Shrek, Donkey and Fiona going through an enchanted forest and ended up at a witch's gingerbread house," she said. "Her whole front lawn was completely booby trapped with lasers and sticks that come out of the ground. Shrek had to dive through all these things. Cute little bunnies would jump up and shoot blow darts at him as he tried to do a military jump and tumble to get into the house and save Fiona and Donkey. He ends up getting trapped himself and the three of them are hanging near a cauldron while this witch is mixing a brew and the three of them sort of work together to turn her spell back on her. It was fun, but I don't know if we even put it into a test screening. I think that it was kind of a long sequence and I think we pulled it before we even tried it in a test." Adamson said he and Jenson ultimately chose the fairy tales that served the story or comedy best. "What we would do quite often is we'd get in a brainstorming session with the storyboard artists and say everyone has to come up with three or four fairy tale gags," Adamson said. "Out of those we'd end up picking the best for one reason or other, maybe they fitted the flow of the sequence better or maybe the others were just funnier."

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