Eshin Direct

Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz return to the big screen to reprise their characters in Shrek 2. In this sequel, Shrek and Princess Fiona are invited to the land of Far Far Away to meet the princess’ parents. Only thing is that they expected their daughter to be, well, human and their son-in-law to be Prince Charming. Definitely not an ogre. The King, Fiona’s father, sets out to seperate the two and Shrek must set out to prove his love for Fiona.

Shrek 2 is wonderfully funny film. Like it’s predecessor, it features cameos of numerous characters from all our favourite fairy tales, giving them a modern day attitude and behaviour. The original cast members are back (Murphy, Myers and Diaz) and this time they’ve brought along the voice talents of heavy hitting celebrities like Antonio Banderas, John Cleese and Jennifer Saunders. Perhaps the presence of such recognizable voices could have detracted from the fantasy that is Shrek 2 but they seemed to work well with the animated characters on the screen. Thankfully, the animators had chosen to keep the characters themselves rather than introduce small elements that visually brought the voice actor through.

Visually, in terms of CG, there was nothing that impressed me sufficiently. I’m not the expert on these things but I don’t think there was anything that should have made us sit up and notice. The visual hit was more from seeing typically fantasy elements being equated into modern-day references. This is where the humour and the amusement lay and I believe that Shrek 2 is well worth watching twice since you’ll always discover something new that the film parodies.

The humour was at times very hilarious and had me and the rest of the audience in stitches. The only thing was that it wasn’t thought out that well. So there was often something absolutely funny on the screen, yet a split second later, the humour had gone. Not really emotioneered for a continuous “please stop, you’re killing me” type of amusement.

You could do worse than to go and see Shrek 2. I enjoyed it, if only for the Puss in Boots. You’ll see why.

Tags: Movies