Shrek (2001)

There are animated films that arrive quietly and find their audience over time, and then there are films like Shrek. Released in May 2001 by DreamWorks Pictures and produced through their Pacific Data Images and DreamWorks Animation divisions, it landed with the force of a very large, very irritable ogre cannonballing into a swamp. The premise is, on the surface, a fairly simple fairy-tale inversion: an ogre named Shrek, content in his solitary bog, is suddenly overrun by fairytale creatures banished there by the vain and diminutive Lord Farquaad (voiced with gleeful nastiness by John Lithgow). To reclaim his peace, Shrek strikes a deal to rescue Princess Fiona from a dragon-guarded castle, accompanied by a talking donkey he very much did not ask for. What that bare synopsis does not convey is how aggressively the film positioned itself against the Disney tradition, trading in winking irreverence, pop-culture jokes, and a general attitude that fairy tales were ripe for deflating. That posture felt genuinely fresh in 2001, arriving in the same cultural moment when Pixar was still finding its feet with a wider audience, and DreamWorks was visibly hungry to establish a rival identity.

The film was co-directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, with Adamson going on to direct Shrek 2 and later The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Based loosely on William Steig's 1990 picture book of the same name, the script leans far harder into parody and pop-cultural irreverence than the source material ever did. The voice cast is central to why it works as well as it does. Mike Myers brings a genial, put-upon warmth to Shrek (delivered, famously, in a Scottish accent that replaced an earlier American one during production), while Eddie Murphy throws himself into Donkey with the kind of unrestrained comic energy that tends to either exhaust or delight, rarely anything in between. Cameron Diaz gives Fiona a grounded, self-sufficient quality that keeps her from being purely a punchline, and Vincent Cassel turns up in a smaller role among the fairytale ensemble. The film was also notable, at the time, for pushing computer-generated imagery into new territory, particularly in its rendering of cloth, hair, and natural environments, even if those achievements look rather more modest when viewed through a 2024 lens. For a sense of where animated storytelling has gone since, comparisons with later reviewed work like Trolls or the hand-drawn craft on display in Josep are instructive, if not always flattering to either side.

Yeah yeah, I know, “All Star” plays, and suddenly we’re all 12 again. And look, Shrek is charming, clever, and groundbreaking for its time. It flipped the fairy-tale formula on its head and gave us one of the most iconic animated characters of the 2000s. The humor lands (especially the meta jokes for adults), Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy are having way too much fun, and the OG Donkey is still comedy gold. But… time hasn’t been super kind. It’s aged a bit more “meh” than magical, especially after so much memeification and endless sequels. The irony and self-awareness that made it fresh now feel a little tired. Still a classic, just maybe not a top-tier one.

And honestly, that tension between nostalgia and honest reassessment is exactly where I find myself landing too. There is something a little bittersweet about revisiting a film you once thought was effortlessly cool, only to notice how hard it is actually working to seem effortless. The jokes aimed at adults still raise a smile, and Murphy's timing remains genuinely funny in places, but the whole enterprise carries a faint whiff of a film that was rather pleased with itself for being subversive, at a moment when subversion was becoming its own kind of orthodoxy. It is still worth your ninety minutes, particularly if you have not seen it since it was new, and there is real affection in how it handles its central odd-couple dynamic. Just maybe go in expecting something polished but unremarkable, rather than the stone-cold classic the internet tends to declare it every few years. Sometimes a swamp is just a swamp.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2001  | Watched: 2025-07-20

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Shrek (2001) on YouTube

Where to watch

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Andrew Adamson: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) · Shrek 2 (2004)
More with Mike Myers: Shrek 2 (2004)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)