2001: Shrek Opens

On This Day in Pop: May 18, 2001

On May 18, 2001, Shrek entered wide North American release after a Cannes premiere and openings in Los Angeles and New York earlier in the week. Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, the computer-animated comedy followed a solitary ogre forced to rescue Princess Fiona for the status-conscious Lord Farquaad. Mike Myers voiced Shrek, Eddie Murphy played Donkey, Cameron Diaz performed Fiona and John Lithgow supplied Farquaad’s brittle authority. The movie borrowed William Steig’s picture-book character but built a larger parody of familiar fairy tales and animated conventions. Its hero did not aspire to princely perfection, while Fiona’s secret complicated the assumption that transformation must lead toward conventional beauty. The broad jokes, contemporary songs and celebrity voices gave the film an immediate mainstream surface.

DreamWorks Animation was still establishing an identity distinct from Disney and Pixar. Shrek made that competition part of the entertainment, filling Duloc and its displaced storybook characters with pointed references to theme parks and classic cartoons. The production had endured years of technical and creative change, including a major redesign after early motion-capture tests failed. Pacific Data Images and DreamWorks artists developed skin, cloth, mud, crowds and expressive character animation that served comedy more than realism. Murphy’s rapid improvisational energy gave Donkey a different rhythm from Shrek’s wary restraint, and Myers rerecorded the lead dialogue with a Scottish accent. The film’s irreverence could be aggressive, but it also used parody to question who is allowed to occupy the center of a fairy tale.

Shrek became a major box-office hit, won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and generated sequels, television specials, merchandise and a stage musical. Its mix of pop songs, knowing references and adult-oriented jokes influenced a long line of family animation, sometimes producing imitations that copied the attitude without the emotional foundation. The film’s continuing meme life shows how its dialogue and images have detached from their original marketing cycle. It also helped make DreamWorks a durable competitor in feature animation. May 18 marks the day a story about an unwanted outsider became a new corporate flagship. The movie’s most lasting idea is simpler than its sarcasm: love does not restore Shrek and Fiona to a supposedly proper form. It allows them to recognize that the form others mocked can be the basis of a shared life. The soundtrack’s use of existing pop songs further separated the film from orchestral fairy-tale convention. That choice made the medieval setting feel contemporary and encouraged later animated comedies to treat music supervision as a source of jokes and identity.