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| Adam Adamson & Vicky Jenson |
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| (voices of:) Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy,
Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Donkey
(Eddie Murphy): I ain't never met someone who didn't like parfait.
You never hear someone say, "Hey, you want some parfait?"
"Hell no, I don't want no parfait!"
An
ogre sets out to rescue a princess in order to rid himself of refugee
fairy tale creatures exiled to his swamp by an evil prince.
 An
irreverent piss-take of fairy tales in general and Disney clichés
in particular, Shrek guarantees a refreshingly brash, adult-oriented
computer-animated experience, with a joke-driven narrative skillfully
targeted on Disney's weakest spot. A no-holds-barred onslaught of below-the-belt
but hilarious swipes at the Mouse Kingdom's sacred cows provides the
movie with some of its funniest moments, while its many smartly judged
anachronisms and sight gags fuels the movie's fast pace and nearly make
up for its undernourished screenplay. Mike Myers is a bit of a disappointment
voicing the title role, with a wavering Scottish accent familiar from
the Fat Bastard character in the second Austin Powers movie.
Eddie Murphy fares better, though he does little else than repeat his
performance from Disney's Mulan. As an animated comedy, this
therefore ends up a rather hit-and-miss affair, with occasional huge
laughs as well as some exciting set pieces. As a technical achievement
within the digital realm, Shrek sets a completely new standard,
providing an amount of detail of texture, skin and expressiveness previously
unknown. |
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Near-identical
two-disc editions are available for Region 1 and Region 2 (UK). The
UK release is missing only the DTS track from its Region 1 counterpart.
The Region 1 release served as a basis for this review.
EDITOR'S
NOTE: Disc 1 contains a fullscreen version of the film (with a Dolby
Digital 5.1 audio mix) that diverts from the original aspect ratio and
was therefore not included in the following review. All of the
following specifications apply only to the widescreen version found
on disc 2.
The anamorphic
widescreen image is framed at an aspect ratio of approx. 1.78:1. This
digital-to-digital transfer is - in a word - breathtaking, providing
an image as detailed and flawless as they come, at least as good as
Pixar's gorgeous Toy Story 2 DVD but much richer in detail. An
absolute reference-quality disc for showcasing any good DVD system!
The widescreen version of the film on disc 2 carries both a Dolby Digital
and a DTS 5.1 audio mix. Both are superb, presenting the highly detailed
sound design as impressively and richly as one would expect from a good
animated film, with the DTS track once again only just trumping the
Dolby Digital track thanks to its superior high-end dynamics. For those
with ProLogic audio systems, a matrixed two-channel Dolby Surround track
is also available on disc 2, presenting a dressed-down but still acceptable
rendition of the above surround mixes.
This
year's biggest commercial hit arrives on DVD in time for the holiday
season in a two-disc set, the cover of which boasts over eleven hours
(!!!) of extras. Don't allow yourself to be misled by this bold statement
however, for those expecting a release as feature-heavy as the Toy
Story - Ultimate Toy Box or even the Men in Black - Limited Edition
will be sadly disappointed. To be sure, the Shrek DVD holds quite
a few decent extras, but the fact that this is such a hugely marketed
two-disc set is misleading to begin with, as the set really holds two
discs that could easily have been packaged and sold separately: a kiddie
disc, with a fullscreen transfer and child-friendly, 'fun-filled' extras,
and a 'collector's disc' carrying a widescreen transfer, three different
English audio mixes, an audio commentary track and some other extras
geared more specifically towards animation fans and DVD collectors.
To begin with disc 1, we get a fairly standard but still entertaining
23-minute featurette, produced for network TV to promote the
movie, and featuring the expected Mutual Admiration Society consisting
of the likes of the voice talent, directors, assorted members of the
technical crew and señor Katzenberg himself. A much more valuable
inclusion is a segment that has been marketed as an extended ending,
available in anamorphic widescreen on both discs. It's a three-minute
segment that plays automatically as the film ends, and is also available
from the Special Features menu screen, where it is presented as 'Shrek
In the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party'. It doesn't include any karaoke functionality,
presenting instead an uproarious medley of characters from the movie
voicing bits and pieces from a wide variety of classic pop tunes, great
stuff and brilliantly animated, as good as anything in the original
film. Also fun are the character interviews to be found in the
cast biography section. These two-minute interview segments were
animated and voiced as if they were recorded on the set with the three
main characters themselves (sadly, no interview with Lord Farquaad was
included). More standard text screens with cast biography information
are also available here, as are crew biography items for surprisingly
many members of the movie's production crew.
The main focus of this child-friendly first disc is primarily on game-style
entertainment. There are five simple games available on the DVD
as it plays, and another ten or so games and activities are to be found
in the DVD-ROM content on the disc, which also includes an elaborate
'Shrek revoice studio' which allow you to record your own voice
over selected scenes from the movie. Sounds like fun, but unfortunately
once again the DVD-ROM content has not been made available for the Macintosh.
Other child-oriented features on disc 1 include themed 'favorite scene
access', two music videos (along with a disturbing 'making-of'
featurette for one of them) and some production notes culled
from the press kit.
 Disc
2 houses the only acceptable version of the film, along with the most
in-depth extras most real fans of the movie will be looking for. Directors
Andrew Adamson and Vicki Jensen and producer Aron Warner together provided
a scene-specific audio commentary track that is informative and
enjoyable, though it does suffer from the occasional dull patch when
all three seem to run out of steam for a few minutes. It's the most
in-depth item on the disc as far as the production details are concerned.
The twenty-minute featurette 'The Tech of Shrek' was based on
much of the same material as that featured in the promotional featurette
on disc 1, but it shows a lot more of the specifics regarding the movie's
computer animation techniques. It does remain pretty basic however,
and the presentation is a bit shallow.
Fans of the movie will greatly enjoy the storyboard pitch of deleted
scenes. No animated versions of deleted or abandoned sequences is
available, but this multi-angle presentation of the storyboard pitch
(with separate angles for close-ups of the storyboard designs and for
the story artist pitching the scene) are very lively and provide an
excellent idea of what the sequence might have been. There's also a
three-minute selection of technical goofs, many of which also
appear within the 'Tech of Shrek' featurette, illustrating some humorous
ways in which things can go badly wrong in computer animation by mixing
up a few variables. A dubbing featurette should also be familiar
from other DVD releases of animation titles, presenting a quick roundup
of various languages into which the movie was dubbed for international
release. A funny but very short item. The last substantial extra on
disc 2 is rather confusingly monikered 'Progression Reel', as it actually
contains design galleries for all the movie's major characters and locations.
Fantastic stuff for animation buffs, who will probably be left hungry
for more! The production notes, cast and filmmakers biographies
and theatrical trailer are all identical to those presented on
disc 1, apart from the fact that the character interviews are missing
here.
All in all, this DVD release ends up very similar to the actual film:
a meticulously presented, furiously promoted package that tries to cater
to several audiences at once and ends up a little unfulfilling to each
of them. It's as hard to argue however with the technical standard this
DVD sets (again: like the movie itself), and although it might have
benefitted from some less exaggerated marketing, it still has excellent
entertainment value, though the movie itself will certainly be replayed
a lot more than most of these shallow extras. The
gorgeously animated main menu screen presents a line-up of fairy-tale
creatures in the forest, with Donkey leaping up and down behind them yelling
'Pick me! Pick me!' Selecting a navigation option activates a set of characters
into a very funny transitional animation that looks as good as anything
in the movie. Navigation is consistent and pleasant throughout both discs.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: 2001
Click
here for IMDB info on Shrek.
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