My four-year-old son has been seeing previews for Shrek the Third all summer long and he’s become quite a fan of the big green ogre over the past couple months. He wanted to see the movie, but since his attention span isn’t quite to the point where he can sit still for two hours, I figured it would be better to rent the original Shrek film and watch it at home rather than taking our chances on a good theater experiences. Here’s what I thought of the 2001 Academy Award-winning effort from Dreamworks.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The first character we meet is Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers), an ogre who lives in a swampy area deep in the forest. He is sloppy, dirty, unmannered, and completely happy with his solitary existence.

Then one day, Shrek encounters a talking Donkey (Eddie Murphy) who is trying to escape from a group of armed soldiers. Shrek helps Donkey, and then gets the lowdown on what’s happening: Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) wants to get rid of all the fairy tale creatures from his kingdom, so his minions are busy rounding them up. Shrek doesn’t really care about any of this until the creatures show up in his forest. They’re crowding Shrek and imposing on his lifestyle, which is a completely intolerable situation as far as he’s concerned.

Shrek decides to take care of the problem himself by journeying with Donkey to Lord Farquaad’s kingdom. When they arrive, they walk right into the middle of a tournament that Farquaad is having to determine which brave knight should go and rescue Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), the woman Farquaad has chosen to marry. Fiona is under an enchantment and is locked away in a distant tower guarded by a fire-breathing dragon, so it’s important to find the best warrior for the mission.

Shrek easily defeats all of Farquaad’s knights, and though Farquaad’s first impulse is to kill the ogre, he decides instead to have Shrek go rescue Fiona. Shrek agrees to do so, provided Farquaad will take back the fairy tale creatures so Shrek can have the forest and swamp to himself again.

The rest of the movie then deals with the rescue mission that Shrek and Donkey undertake. They tame the fire-breathing dragon, rescue the beautiful princess, and discover the true nature of her enchantment as well. Along the way, Shrek learns some important lessons about friendship and love, and undergoes a significant change.

My Reaction: I thought Shrek was a very good movie! It was a lot of fun and contained humor that appealed to both adults and kids. The storyline was simple (my son could follow it for the most part) yet effective, and I thought this movie put a great twist on the whole Prince Charming/Enchanted Princess/happily ever after fairy tale.

I felt that Eddie Murphy did some terrific work here. His Donkey character really stole the show and made the entire film worth watching. I can’t imagine any other actor being as successful in this part as Murphy, so kudos to the casting director for that inspired choice!

One thing I didn’t get at all was why Shrek spoke with an Irish(?) accent the whole time. What was that all about? Surely the script didn’t call for that?! It was distracting and annoying, but fortunately the end result didn’t suffer too much because of it.

Overall, I thought Shrek was an excellent family film that has managed to hold up even after six years. It’s funny, interesting, and, at just 90 minutes long, it doesn’t get sidetracked by stupid subplots. I’m giving this movie 4 stars out of 5 and definitely recommend that you see it!