By Andrew Sanford | Film | November 24, 2023 |
By Andrew Sanford | Film | November 24, 2023 |
I was the target audience for Shrek when it came out. I loved cartoons (especially funny ones). Much of my time was spent watching SNL reruns on Comedy Central, so a movie led by Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy was very exciting. Also, I was 12. For whatever reason, I did not see it in theaters. It wasn’t until a half day at the end of my sixth-grade year that I would lay my eyes upon the big green ogre. It was fine.
It’s not that I disliked Shrek, I just didn’t understand why people my age loved it as much as they did. The movie would spawn three sequels, several spinoffs, and a host of specials. I haven’t seen any of them. I did spend ten months working the bar at Shrek: The Musical on Broadway, which I like a lot, but that’s where my relationship with Shrek ends.
Because a lot of people my age are in charge of the zeitgeist, there has been an uptick in Shrek in recent years. At first, I thought people were being facetious. Shrek was getting memed because people fell in love with his burps and screams 20 years ago and are now using his adventures to ignore their slow but certain march to the great unknown.
There is an element of What If that is engrained in the Shrek franchise. Chris Farley was originally hired to voice the fairytale character but passed away before finishing his lines. I have also learned that Nicolas Cage turned the part down. Now, we know that Shrek almost had a look that more closely resembled his storybook counterpart. A new video uploaded to YouTube shows the original Shrek test footage, and it is frightening.
Despite the quality of the upload, the animation isn’t bad! It’s a little blurry, but Shrek’s teeth, for instance, look gnarly and gross. His grabbing a potential robber by the throat happens smoothly. The dancing looks better than the baby on Alley McBeal. There’s a lot to like here! I can also understand why they went in another direction. It didn’t work on me, but it worked.