Shrek
The hate-hate relationship between Disney CEO Michael Eisner and former Disney head of production and current DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is well-documented—from Katzenberg's multi-million dollar lawsuit (for his share of the profits from the animated juggernauts he engineered while at Disney) to the revelation that Eisner once called Katzenberg "that little midget."
It seems clear the antagonist of DreamWorks' latest computer-animated film, Lord Farquaad, is a diminutive stand-in for Eisner and that Katzenberg and DreamWorks definitely have an axe to grind with The Mouse House, an axe which they've sharpened to a razor edge on the bones of every Disney-corrupted fairy tale in the deliciously subversive Shrek.
In an amusingly acidic twist, the aforementioned Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) has banished all fairy tale characters from his Disney World-like kingdom, Duloc. With nowhere else to go, the vagabond fairy tales have all deposited themselves in the swamp of the film's titular ogre, Shrek (Mike Myers). Shrek is a nice enough fellow, if anyone would ever get to know him; but since people seem more interested in perpetuating the stereotype of an ogre, Shrek plays along, acting mean and vicious and preferring his solitary lifestyle.
None too thrilled that his home has been invaded by three blind mice, three little pigs, three bears, and about three hundred other bedtime story characters, Shrek goes to see Lord Farquaad (who needs to marry a princess to become king), and Farquaad promises to return Shrek's land if he'll go rescue Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from a dragon. Accompanied by a talking donkey (Eddie Murphy in a spectacularly funny role), Shrek sets out to rescue the princess. It's no surprise to say that, of course, Shrek and the princess fall in love; it's what happens along the way that makes Shrek truly inspired and thematically delightful.
The irreverence toward both the traditional fairy tales and, especially, the Disneyfied versions of them, creates the most laugh-out-loud funny moments I've had at the movies in a long time. Shrek crudely tears down the Disney formula with a combination of acerbic wit and chaos previously reserved for the Warner Bros. animators of the 1940s and 1950s, who seemed to loathe the limited imaginations at Disney.
Like 1998's Antz (also co-produced with the computer-animators at PDI) and last year's smash hit Chicken Run, DreamWorks has hit the jackpot once again with a smartly written story, characters, and dialogue, instead of formulaic song and dance numbers, and the same 60-year-old rehashed plot of its main competitor.
With the exception of its highly successful co-productions with Pixar, Disney by now must consider DreamWorks a serious threat to its animation kingdom, and rightly so. Shrek makes no bones about it; Disney is the target. The little guy Katzenberg has made good in his new venture, overseeing films that not only surpass anything to come out of the Magic Kingdom, but, as is the case with Shrek, one of the best films of the year.