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The 25th Anniversary of DreamWorks’ “Shrek”
“The greatest fairy tale never told.” That was the tagline on the Shrek poster, perfectly describing the film, which, hard as it is to believe, celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary this month.
The film was DreamWorks’ first bona fide blockbuster, grossing $267 million domestically, won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in the spring of 2002, and began a franchise for the studio that continues beyond the screen to theme parks, Broadway, TV specials, merchandise, spin off movies, sequels (including a fifth planned for next year) and now sits squarely as an immensely popular part of our pop culture.
In the mid-’90s, Producer John H. Williams’ children had been reading author and cartoonist William Steig’s picture book Shrek! and Williams brought the book to Jeffrey Katzenberg’s attention.
Katzenberg, as Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, was part of the team that had shepherded Disney through that studio’s animation renaissance of the 1990s (with such groundbreaking blockbusters as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King). He left Disney in 1994, in a highly publicized exit, then partnered with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen to form the new studio, DreamWorks SKG.
Shrek would go on to famously skewer much of Disney’s fabled worlds. The film’s princess warbles in such a high-pitched voice (a la Snow White) that one of the birds singing along explodes. The kingdom greets visitors with cheerily singing audio-animatronic figures straight out of “It’s a Small World’ (including a “souvenir photo” at the end of their performance).
Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, the film centered on the title character, a cynical, solitary, grumpy ogre (voiced by Mike Myers), who finds his swamp home threatened when the evil Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) banishes fairy tale creatures to the same swamp.
Storyboard sketch
DreamWorks partnered with the computer animation studio Pacific Data Images (which DreamWorks had purchased in 2000) on the film version of Shrek. Initially, comedian Chris Farley was cast as Shrek and had recorded most of his dialogue before his untimely passing in 1997. Myers (Farley’s co-star on Saturday Night Live) was then recast as the ogre, ultimately deciding on a Scottish accent (like his “Fat Bastard” character from his Austin Powers franchise of films) for the character.
In addition to satire, there was plenty of contemporary pop-culture humor that was woven into the film’s script by Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, and Roger S.H. Schulman, as well as the many story artists. Farquaad’s Magic Mirror informs him about Fiona via a Dating Game parody. And Donkey constantly belts out a string of Top 40 hits, including The Monkees’ classic “I’m a Believer,” in the film’s upbeat finale.
Shrek opened in theaters on May 18, 2001, receiving praise from critics, including Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum. Twenty-five years later, her words sum up just how fresh and innovative Shrek was. She wrote: “This charmingly loopy, iconoclastic story about a crotchety ogre, a rakish donkey, a princess with a beauty secret, and a contemptible nobleman with a Napoleon complex isn’t only a funny, sprightly fable for all ages about not judging a book by its cover; it’s also a kind of palace coup, a shout of defiance, and a coming-of-age for DreamWorks, the upstart studio that shepherded the project with such skill and chutzpah.”
