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Shrek
Directed by	Andrew Adamson Vicky Jenson
Written by	Screenplay: Ted Elliot Terry Rossio Joe Stillman Roger S.H. Schulman Book: William Steig
Produced by	Jeffrey Katzenberg Aron Warner John H. Williams
Starring	Voices: Mike Myers Eddie Murphy Cameron Diaz John Lithgow
Music by	Harry Gregson-Williams John Powell
Distributed by	USA: DreamWorks SKG Non-USA Theatrical: United International Pictures DVD/Video: Universal Pictures (through DreamWorks label until 2006) Paramount Pictures (2006–) Television Distribution: CBS Paramount Television (2006–)
Release dates	May 16, 2001
Running time	90 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$60 million

Shrek is an Academy Award winning animated feature film based upon William Steig's 1990 fairy tale picture book entitled Shrek! It was directed by New Zealander Andrew Adamson and Los Angeles artist Vicky Jenson and animated by DreamWorks Animation SKG in May 2001. Shrek was the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, a category introduced in 2001. It was released on DVD and VHS on November 7 2001.

The film features the voices of Mike Myers as a large, strong, solitude-loving, grumpy ogre named Shrek (from the Yiddish word שרעק meaning "fear"), Cameron Diaz as the beautiful but very down-to-earth and feisty Princess Fiona, Eddie Murphy as a talkative donkey named Donkey, and John Lithgow as the villainous Lord Farquaad.

It was critically acclaimed as an animated film worthy of adult interest, with many adult-oriented jokes and themes but a simple enough plot and humor to appeal to children. It made notable use of pop music—the soundtrack includes music by Smash Mouth, Joan Jett, The Proclaimers, Jason Wade, The Baha Men, and Rufus Wainwright.

The film was extremely successful on release in 2001 and it helped establish DreamWorks as a prime competitor to Walt Disney Pictures in the field of feature film animation, particularly in computer animation. Furthermore, Shrek was made the mascot for the company's animation productions.

This film is third on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". Shrek was also ranked second in a Channel 4 poll of the 100 greatest family films, losing out on the top spot to E.T.

Plot

shrek wastes 90 minutes of your life

Production

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Don Bluth revealed in an interview that halfway through production of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Steven Spielberg approached Don with the concept of making Shrek, as a traditionally animated movie. Don agreed and throughout the rest of the production of Fievel Goes West, he thought about what he was going to do to expand a small story into a feature length script. Steven only had two demands, 1) Bill Murray would play Shrek and 2) Steve Martin would play Donkey, both were available at the time. However, when Fievel Goes West was released in cinemas, Steven spoke highly of it, but spoke even more highly of rival Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Don felt betrayed by this, leading to a bitter falling out between the two and Shrek being put in development hell.

Chris Farley was originally going to do the voice for Shrek and did at least half of the audio for the voice, but died before the project was completed. Dreamworks then re-cast the voice role to Mike Myers. After Myers had completed providing the voice for the character and the movie was well into production, he asked to be allowed to re-record all of his lines in a Scottish accent similar to the one his mother used when she told him bedtime stories. (In Britain, Scots are often stereotyped as hulking, antisocial, and bad-tempered, a possible reason for the choice of accent.) Myers had also employed this character voicing for a skit during his Saturday Night Live tenure, and also for the character Stuart MacKenzie in the motion picture So I Married an Axe Murderer and Fat Bastard in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Cast

• Mike Myers ... Shrek
• Eddie Murphy ... Donkey
• Cameron Diaz ... Princess Fiona
• John Lithgow ... Lord Farquaad
• Conrad Vernon ... Gingerbread Man
• Chris Miller ... Geppetto / Magic Mirror
• Cody Cameron ... Pinocchio / Three Little Pigs
• Michael Galasso ... Peter Pan
• Chris Knights ... Blind Mouse / Thelonius
• Simon Smith ... Blind Mouse
• Aron Warner ... Big Bad Wolf
• Jim Cummings ... Captain of the Guards
• Jerome De Guzman ... Blind Mice
• Vincent Cassel ... Robin Hood

Soundtrack

Influences

Previous cartoons, such as Fractured Fairy Tales and The Princess Bride (film), have parodied the traditional fairy tale.. However Shrek itself has noticeably influenced the current generation of mainstream animated films. Particularly after Shrek 2, animated films began to incorporate more pop culture references and end-film musical numbers. Such can be seen in films like Ice Age 2, Robots, Chicken Little, and Hoodwinked!. Dreamworks' recent films such as Shark Tale and Madagascar, similar in style to Shrek, were panned by critics. Nevertheless retribution was made by Over the Hedge which was released in the summer of 2006 and received a much warmer reception.

Other media

Books

Original story on which the film is based:

• Steig, William (1990). Shrek!, Sunburst Paperback. ISBN 0-374-46623-8

Video games

Several video game adaptations of Shrek have been published on various game console platforms.

• Shrek (video game)
• Shrek 2 (video game)
• Shrek Smash and Crash
• Shrek: Hassle at the Castle
• Shrek Super Slam
• Shrek: Extra Large
• Shrek: Super Party
• Shrek the Third (video game)

Comic books

• In 2003 Dark Horse Comics released a Shrek three-issue mini-series comic book adaptation, which was collected into a trade paperback.

Theater

A musical version of Shrek is planned for the stage in 2008. Jeanine Tesori, composer of Thoroughly Modern Millie and Caroline, or Change has been commissioned to compose the show's music, with the book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire. A reading was held in February 2007, and a later one was held July-August 2007. The hit songs "All Star" and "I'm A Believer" from the original movie will be transformed into musical numbers for the stage (most likely sung by Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona).

Crew

References

1. Time Magazine May 10, 2007
2. http://www.darkhorse.com/profile/profile.php?sku=12-541
3. see playbill article December 8, 2006 and playbill article, August 10, 2007

See also

• Other Shrek films
• List of animated feature-length films
• List of computer-animated films
• List of fairy tale characters in Shrek

External links

• Shrek Official Web Site
• Shrek at IMDb
• Shrek at Rotten Tomatoes
• Shrek at Metacritic
• DreamWorks SKG Fansite for Shrek
• Tom Hester - Shrek Character Designer
• William Steig's web page describing the original 1990 story book
• Shrek Rendering Statistics
• Shrek at Box Office Mojo

• Misplaced Pages articles with plot summary needing attention from July 2007
• Shrek
• 2001 films
• Best Animated Feature Academy Award winners
• Annie Award winners
• Computer-animated films
• DreamWorks Animation films
• Fantasy-comedy films
• Children's fantasy films
• Films based on children's books
• Films directed by Andrew Adamson
• Parody films
• American films
• English-language films