Psycho's Movie Reviews #437: Shrek 2 (2004)

Shrek 2 is a 2004 American computer-animated comedy film loosely based on the 1990 picture book Shrek! by William Steig. Directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, and Conrad Vernon, it is the sequel to Shrek (2001) and the second instalment in the Shrek film franchise. The film stars Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz, who reprise their respective voice roles of Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona. They are joined by new characters voiced by Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Rupert Everett, and Jennifer Saunders. Like its predecessor, Shrek 2 also parodies other films based on fairy tales and features references to American popular culture. Shrek 2 takes place following the events of the first film, with Shrek and Donkey meeting Fiona's parents as her zealous Fairy Godmother, who wants Fiona to marry her son Prince Charming, plots to destroy Shrek and Fiona's marriage. Shrek and Donkey team up with a swashbuckling cat named Puss in Boots to foil her plans.

Development began in 2001, and following disagreements with producers, the first film's screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were replaced with Adamson. The story was inspired by Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), and new animation tools were utilized to improve the visual appearance of each character, particularly Puss in Boots. The lead actors also received a significant bump in salary to $10 million, which at the time was among the highest contracts in their respective careers.

Shrek 2 premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or, and it was released in theaters on May 19, 2004. Met with highly favourable reviews like its predecessor, the film grossed US$928.7 million worldwide. It scored the second-largest three-day opening weekend in U.S. history and the largest opening for an animated film at the time of its release. It went on to become the highest-grossing film of 2004 worldwide. Shrek 2 is also DreamWorks Animation's most successful film to date, and it held the title of being the highest-grossing animated film of all time worldwide until Toy Story 3 surpassed it in 2010. The film received two Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song, and its associated soundtrack charted in the Top 10 on the US Billboard 200. A sequel to the film, Shrek the Third, was released in May 2007.

Plot

Newlyweds Shrek and Fiona return from their honeymoon to find they have been invited by Fiona's parents to a royal ball to celebrate their marriage. Shrek refuses to attend at first, but Fiona talks him into it, and along with Donkey, they travel to the kingdom of Far Far Away. They meet Fiona's parents, King Harold and Queen Lillian, who are shocked to see both their daughter and son-in-law are ogres, with Harold particularly repulsed. At dinner, Shrek and Harold get into a heated argument and Fiona, disgusted at their behaviour, locks herself away in her room. Shrek worries that he is losing Fiona, particularly after finding her childhood diary and reading that she was once infatuated with Prince Charming.

Harold is reprimanded by the Fairy Godmother and her son Prince Charming, as Charming was to marry Fiona in exchange for Harold's own happy ending. She orders him to find a way to get rid of Shrek. Harold arranges for Shrek and Donkey to join him on a fictitious hunting trip, which is actually a trap to lure them into the hands of an expert assassin, Puss in Boots. Unable to defeat Shrek, Puss reveals that he was paid by Harold and offers to ally himself with the two. The trio sneak into the Fairy Godmother's potion factory and steal a "Happily Ever After" potion that Shrek thinks will make him good enough for Fiona. Shrek and Donkey both drink the potion and it fails to work immediately, leaving both Donkey and Shrek disappointed; as they walk off and it starts raining, however, a toadstool mushroom Shrek had sneezed some of the potion onto turns into a flower.

Without warning, the potion takes effect, as not only Donkey and Shrek, but also Fiona despite being separated from them, fall into a deep sleep, awakening the next morning to discover its effects: Shrek is now a handsome man, while Donkey has turned into an elegant white stallion. In order to make the change permanent, Shrek must kiss Fiona by midnight. Shrek, Donkey, and Puss return to the castle to discover that the potion has transformed Fiona back into her former human self as well. However, the Fairy Godmother, having discovered the potion's theft, has already sent Charming to pose as Shrek and win Fiona's love. At the Fairy Godmother's urging, Shrek leaves the castle, believing that the best way to make Fiona happy is to let her go.

To ensure that Fiona falls in love with Charming, the Fairy Godmother gives Harold a love potion to put into Fiona's tea. This exchange is overheard by Shrek, Donkey, and Puss, who are arrested by the royal guards when Donkey accidentally gives themselves away. While the royal ball begins, several of Shrek's friends rescue the trio and they storm the castle with the help of the Muffin Man's monster-sized gingerbread man. Shrek is too late to prevent Charming from kissing Fiona, but instead of falling in love with Charming, Fiona knocks him out. Harold then reveals that he didn't give Fiona the love potion, whereupon the now-enraged Fairy Godmother tries to kill Shrek. Harold blocks off the spell for Shrek, which ricochets off his armour and hits Fairy Godmother, disintegrating her. Harold is then reverted to the Frog Prince due to her death undoing her other spells. Harold apologizes for his earlier behaviour, admitting his use of the Happily Ever After potion years earlier to gain Lillian's love, and gives his blessing to Shrek and Fiona's marriage. Lillian assures Harold that she still loves him.

As the clock strikes midnight, Fiona rejects Shrek's offer to remain humans, and they happily let the potion's effects wear off and revert to their ogre forms, while Donkey also returns to his normal self. In the mid-credits scene, Dragon, who had previously married Donkey, reveals that they now have several dragon-donkey hybrid babies, much to his surprise.

Production

In 2001, soon after the original Shrek proved to be a hit, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz negotiated an upfront payment of $10 million each for voicing a sequel to the film. This pay increase represented a significant rise from the $350,000 salary that each of the three were paid for the first film. According to Jeffrey Katzenberg, the executive producer of Shrek 2 and a co-founder of DreamWorks, who led the negotiations, the payments were probably the highest in the actors' entire careers. Each of the actors were expected to work between 15 and 18 hours in total. The film was produced with a $70 million budget.

Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the screenwriters of the first Shrek film, insisted that the sequel be a traditional fairy tale, but after disagreements with the producers, they left the project and were replaced by director Andrew Adamson. His writing of Shrek 2 was inspired by the 1967 comedy-drama film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and was completed with the help of the film's co-directors, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon, who spent most of the film's production duration in Northern California while Adamson spent most of his time with the film's voice actors in Glendale, California.

DreamWorks began production of Shrek 2 in 2001, before the first Shrek film was completed. The studio added more human characters to the film than there were in its predecessor and improved character appearance and movement with the use of several new animation/rendering systems. In particular, Puss in Boots necessitated development of a whole new set of film production tools to handle the appearance of his fur, belt, and hat plume; Puss' fur especially required an upgrade to the fur shader. All of the character setup was completed in the first three years of production.

In an early version of Shrek 2, Shrek abdicated the throne, and called for a fairy tale election. Pinocchio's campaign was an "honesty" campaign, while Gingy's was a "smear" campaign. Adamson said that although this plot did have many funny ideas, it was also too overtly satiric and political, and considered "more intellectual than emotional". Shrek 2 also appears much darker in terms of lighting when compared to the original film. Designers reportedly took inspiration from 19th century French illustrator and engraver Gustav Doré to improve the film's richness of detail and setting. According to production designer Guillaume Aretos, "There are a lot of medieval paintings and illustrations and my own influences, which are classical paintings from the 15th and 16th centuries...The design of Shrek is always a twist on reality anyway, so we tried to [pack] as much detail and interest as we could in the imagery."

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for Shrek 2 was composed solely by Harry Gregson-Williams. The soundtrack reached the 8th position on the US Billboard 200 and 1st on the US Soundtracks (Billboard). It also features two versions of the 1980s Bonnie Tyler hit "Holding Out for a Hero".

Release/Reception/Box Office

In April 2004, the film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Shrek 2 was originally scheduled for release on June 18, 2004. The film was then moved forward from June 18, 2004, to May 21, 2004; however, due to "fan demand", it was released two days earlier from May 21, 2004, to May 19, 2004. A day before the film went to theaters, the first five minutes were shown on Nickelodeon's U-Pick Live.

Playing in 4,163 theaters over its first weekend in the United States, Shrek 2 was the first film with over 4,000 theaters in overall count. Over 3,700 theaters was its count for an opening day.

In July 2014, the film's distribution rights were purchased by DreamWorks Animation from Paramount Pictures (owners of the pre-2005 DreamWorks Pictures catalogue) and transferred to 20th Century Fox before reverting to Universal Studios in 2018.

Shrek 2 has an approval rating of 89% based on 237 professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 7.7/10. Its critical consensus reads, "It may not be as fresh as the original, but topical humour and colourful secondary characters make Shrek 2 a winner in its own right." Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Shrek 2 a score of 75 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, saying it is "bright, lively, and entertaining", and Robert Denerstein of Denver Rocky Mountain News called it "sharply funny". James Kendrick of QNetwork praised the plot, calling it "familiar, but funny". J. R. Jones of the Chicago Reader called it "unassailable family entertainment", and similar to the first film. Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post called it "better and funnier than the original".

Though he wrote that it is not as good as the first film, Kevin Lally of Film Journal International described it as "inventive and often very funny". Peter Rainer of New York magazine, however, stated the film "manages to undo much of what made its predecessor such a computer-generated joy ride."

The film opened at No. 1 with a Friday-to-Sunday total of $108 million, and $129 million since its Wednesday launch, from a then-record 4,163 theaters, for an average of $25,952 per theatre over the weekend. At the time Shrek 2's Friday-to-Sunday total was the second-highest opening weekend, only trailing Spider-Man's $114.8 million. In addition, Saturday alone managed to obtain $44.8 million, making it the highest single-day gross at the time, beating Spider-Man's first Saturday gross of $43.6 million. The film remained at No. 1 in its second weekend, expanding to 4,223 theaters, and grossing another $95.6 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend, narrowly beating out the $85.8 million four-day tally of new opener The Day After Tomorrow. It spent ten weeks in the weekly Top 10, remaining there until July 29, and stayed in theaters for 149 days (roughly twenty-one weeks), closing on November 25, 2004. The film was released in the United Kingdom on July 2, 2004, and topped the country's box office for the next two weekends, before being dethroned by Spider-Man 2.

The film grossed $441.2 million domestically (US and Canada) and $487.5 million in foreign markets for a total of $928.7 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of both 2004 and in its franchise. This also puts the film at 14th on the all-time domestic box office list and 42nd on the worldwide box office list. The film sold an estimated 71,050,900 tickets in the US.

The film also took away the highest worldwide gross made by an animated feature, which was before held by Finding Nemo (2003), although the latter still had a higher overseas-only gross. With DVD sales and Shrek 2 merchandise estimated to total almost $800 million, the film (which was produced with a budget of $150 million) is DreamWorks' most profitable film to date.

Shrek 2 remained the highest-grossing animated film worldwide until the release of Toy Story 3 (2010), and held the record for the highest-grossing animated film at the North American box office until the release of Finding Dory (2016) as well as the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film at this box office. Disney's 3D re-releases of The Lion King (in 2011) and Finding Nemo (in 2012), Despicable Me 2 (in 2013), Disney's Frozen (also in 2013), Minions (in 2015), Zootopia (in 2016), Finding Dory (also in 2016), Despicable Me 3 (in 2017), Incredibles 2 (in 2018), Toy Story 4, the remake of The Lion King, and Frozen II (all in 2019) respectively, surpassed Shrek 2 and relegated it as the fourteenth-highest-grossing animated film of all time.

Budget $150 million

Box office $928.7 million

My Review

It is never an easy task to follow up such a big hit as Shrek was, however Shrek 2 does a truly fantastic job and you would have a strong case to argue that it is even better than the original. Taking everything that was so enjoyable from the first film, it places it in a different situation and adds a new set of interesting characters to interact with. Whereas I felt that the original Shrek film was content with parodying fairy-tales and letting its characters craft the laughs, Shrek 2 ups the adventure and adds all different kinds of jokes in order to making everything seem bigger than before. This method can so easily fail, but I'm very pleased with how well it works here.

This story is nothing new as Shrek and Fiona are summoned to Far Far Away to meet Fiona's parents who are the king and queen, and unsurprisingly Shrek and the king don't get along. Even the beats and events are nothing we haven't seen before, but it does them with such strong wit and style that it breathes new life into these tropes. But it quickly turns out that the Fairy Godmother plans to have her son marry Fiona as was originally foreseen. This is more of the same, but the idea to do it is very inventive. Shrek drinks a potion that turns him and Fiona human, which causes all kinds of issues. That is so creative and also a commendably brave decision in having the main character take on a different look for a lot of the film.

I certainly think the strong characters are what make Shrek 2 so good. Shrek (with Mike Meyers' fun Scottish accent) is still the angry ogre, but his kind heart shines through. Donkey is again the comedic highlight thanks to his naivety and accidental annoyance while Eddie Murphy is simply perfect. Puss in Boots almost steals the film by bringing so much energy and by being a lovable presence. Both villains are a ton of fun. The Fairy Godmother (an excellent Jennifer Saunders) is as charismatic as she is evil and gets a lot of laughs, while Charming is an enjoyably vain and snooty. John Cleese and Julie Andrews are both superb as usual as the king and queen.

As said the comedy is bigger and broader than before, with a great variety of jokes and nearly all of them work. The pop culture references littered throughout, the ironic use of fairy-tale heroines, all the villains hanging out at the 'Poison Apple' Inn and even the hilarious send up of Cops. Very few jokes fell flat and given how many there are that is quite impressive. The supporting fairy-tale characters, including Pinocchio and the Gingerbread Man, also make a welcomed return and provide plenty of laughs once again. The climax is outstanding. With nods to Ghostbusters and Mission: Impossible, it is both really funny and really exciting with some nice little twists thrown in too.

The romance between Shrek and Fiona was another strong point of the film. I genuinely cared about their relationship and wanted to see them happy, while the predicament they are faced with at the end is gripping and it does send out a very good message. The animation is very vibrant and energetic, fitting the fast paced comedy and even allows for some good atmosphere when needed. Even the smaller details such as the backgrounds are very well designed. I enjoyed the use of pop songs and all of the tracks used fitted in perfectly. The use of 'Holding Out for a Hero' in the climax and sung by the Fairy Godmother added even more drive to the scene.

Simply put Shrek 2 is a fantastic sequel. It continues in the same vein as the original and builds on to it as any good follow-up should do. It was smart to use a plot line that was familiar and could be altered just enough to make it feel fresh. The animation and music were uniformly excellent as usual from DreamWorks. Again though I think it's the characters that make the film work so well. The originals are great yet again, whilst all of the new characters fit in effortlessly and offer gravitas as well as comedy. Shrek 2 succeeds just like the original. 9.6/10

{*Dances profusely*}

{Sidenote: Far Far Away Idol isn't honestly fabulous, so fun on its own}