Shrek (Mike Myers) is a large, green ogre who lives by himself in a swamp. He has a happy life, even though everyone wants to kill him. Also in this strange little town, there is a strange little man by the name of Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow). He wants to become a king, but in order to do so, must marry a princess. And because he wants a perfect kingdom, he feels the need to get rid of all the fairy tale characters that live in this town. Like the three blind mice, or Pinocchio, or the three bears (of Goldielocks fame). No reason is given as to how or why fairy tale characters all happen to live in this town, but they do. So Lord Farquaad decides he wants to marry Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz). But the Princess is in a castle far away, surrounded by a moat of lava, and protected by a dragon. Lord Farquaad makes a deal with Shrek, and his new found counterpart Donkey (a hilarious Eddie Murphy). If they can save the Princess and hand her over to Lord Farquaad, Shrek can get the deed to his swamp. So Shrek and Donkey set out, manage to save the Princess, but at the same time, Shrek falls in love. What will happen to Shrek and the Princess? What will happen to the diminutive Lord Farquaad? What's the deal with the Donkey and the Dragon? You'll have to see to find out.

Without a doubt Eddie Murphy as the voice of the Donkey steals the show. They just let him loose and all sorts of stuff comes out of his mouth. Everyone else is basically the straight man to Eddie's comedic performance. Everytime the Donkey opened his mouth, something funny came out. The rest of the main cast did their thing, but other than the voice of Shrek, it wasn't anything special. The story itself is fine, nothing out of the ordinary for an animated comedy. What I didn't get, and what I think was missing that would have made this a really funny movie, was the fairy tale characters. They were there for really no reason. I have no idea how they got there, or why they were there, but it could have been really funny to use them more in the story. Essentially the movie was a road trip with Shrek and Donkey saving the Princess. The whole cleansing of the fairy tale characters really didn't play a role. It sort of reminded me of Who Framed Roged Rabbit? There you had cartoon characters from all over the map. It didn't matter if it was a Disney character, or a Warner Brothers character, just random figures from cartoon history would show up. Here, they showed up, but for a very short time without much happening. I think it might have been better if they were used more.

The animation was spectacular. The word that came to mind was 'flow'. It flowed very smoothly. Some of the scenes, especially the backgrounds, looked amazingly realistic. And the characters movements, well they flowed. No herky-jerky movements. It amazes me more and more how realistic computer animation is becoming. We're still not at the point where they'll replace real actors. Actually we'll never be there. But for a light hearted animation film, it worked incredibly well.

So overall I enjoyed Shrek. Eddie Murphy was funny as heck and the movie itself was fairly good. I really enjoyed the scenes with all the fairy tale characters from my childhood, but I wish they had been used more, and been included more in the story. But still, this is a great movie for people of all ages to enjoy.

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