OxfordPress.com

Grade: C

Verdict: Half the film you want to see over and over; the other half you never want to see again.

Details: Featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz. Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. Rated PG for body-fluid humor and mildly scary scenes. One hour, 29 minutes.

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Review: DreamWorks' computer animated fractured fairy tale "Shrek" has a lot in common with the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead: When it's good, it's very, very good, but when it's bad, it's horrid.

Not that that matters much, since "Shrek" has summer blockbuster written all over it. It's a pretty safe bet audiences will keep on Shrekin' all summer and for several sequels to come.

Our hero, Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers in a comes-and-goes Scottish burr), is a reclusive ogre who learned ages ago it ain't easy being green. Being shaped like a kumquat with flatulence that can kill fish doesn't help, either.

Still, Shrek is happy enough in his hut, cleaning off with a mud shower and making candles out of his earwax. Happy, that is, until a storybook purge ordered by the very evil and very short Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) floods his yard with the Seven Dwarfs, the Three Blind Mice, the Three Little Pigs and other assorted fairy tale fugitives.

Shrek goes to Farquaad's castle (more about that later), and they strike a deal. The "squatters" will be allowed to return home if Shrek rescues the beautiful Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), who's guarded 24/7 by a dragon. Farquaad wants her to be his bride. With the help of a talking donkey who's a real wisecracker (Eddie Murphy), Shrek frees Fiona. But like everything else in "Shrek," she's not exactly a traditional reclaimed princess. She's part Sleeping Beauty, part Crouching Tiger.

Much--much too much--of "Shrek" is a movie for Hollywood kids. Not kids who live in Hollywood. The "kids" who run the studios who've probably been sniggering themselves silly at "Shrek" screenings. You see, "Shrek" may be based on William Steig's children's book, but it's also a smug compendium of in-joke potshots at Disney, where DreamWorks honcho, Jeffrey Katzenberg, used to work. Farquaad's courtyard looks suspiciously like a whacked-out Disneyland and Farquaad himself is apparently modeled after some Disney bigwig (rumored to be Katzenberg's former boss, Michael Eisner).

One wonders, how many 6-year-olds are going to go into a giggle-fit over a Michael Eisner joke.

Alas, that veneer of rancid Hollywood hip hangs over the picture like a Prada-designed cloud. For example, talking about her castle prison, Fiona sounds for all the world like a house-hunting Beverly Hills Princess ("Sure it's large, but look at the location.") And her duet with a friendly bluebird ends in an explosion of feathers when Fiona reaches for a high note.

So much for childhood innocence. Sure, it's intentional, but then, so was "Battlefield Earth."

That's the bad news. The upside is, parts of "Shrek" are flat-out hilarious. Farquaad tortures the Ginger Bread Man ("Not my jelly bean buttons!") to find out if he knows the Muffin Man. Desperate to keep from becoming a dragon tidbit, the Donkey tries some cheesy flattery: "What a gleaming smile you have. You must hear that all the time from your food."

Murphy, in fact, is one of the brightest spots in "Shrek." He's every bit as funny as he was as the ancestral dragon in "Mulan." His delivery is so effortless that it sounds ad-libbed (reportedly, part of it was.)

Bottom line? Overall, "Shrek" is as depressingly soulless as a "Halloween" sequel and an excruciatingly well-crafted example of the triumph of technology (the 3-D imaging used in "Toy Story") over narrative and tone.

"Shrek" is also clever, imaginative and fast-paced. If it only had a heart.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, (none)