Shrek and Fiona come home from their honeymoon to a royal invitation, and that is where the trouble starts. King Harold and Queen Lillian want to throw a ball in Far Far Away. Shrek does not want to go. He is an ogre. Her parents locked her in a tower. Fiona talks him into it anyway, and the newlyweds ride off with Donkey in tow, leaving the fairy tale creatures to house-sit.
That is the engine of Shrek 2, the 2004 sequel directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon. It runs 92 minutes. It is an animated fantasy comedy, and in this paper’s judgment it holds up well against the first one.
Trailer, via Universal Kids.
The Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Setup
The premise is borrowed, loosely, from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Development began in 2001. The first film’s screenwriters, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, left after disagreements with producers, and Adamson took over the script with Joe Stillman and the team of J. David Stem and David N. Weiss. Shrek 2 is loosely based on William Steig’s 1990 picture book Shrek!, the same source as the original, and it is a direct sequel to Shrek (2001).
The film has a better idea than most sequels: it takes the happy ending and asks what comes next. The tagline says it outright — “What happens after happily ever after?” The answer is a dinner party where the hosts are repulsed by their son-in-law. Harold and Lillian meet their daughter’s husband and cannot hide what they see. Shrek and Harold argue at the table.
Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz Return
Myers, Murphy and Diaz all reprise their voice roles as Shrek, Donkey and Princess Fiona. In this paper’s view, the new cast is where the film gets its lift. Julie Andrews plays Queen Lillian. John Cleese plays King Harold. Rupert Everett plays Prince Charming. Jennifer Saunders plays the Fairy Godmother. Antonio Banderas plays Puss in Boots.
That is a deep bench for a cartoon. Andrews and Cleese, to this paper’s ear, give the in-laws a chill a lesser pair could not manage. Saunders plays the Fairy Godmother as a celebrity potions saleswoman, and the performance reads cheerful on the surface and cold underneath. Everett’s Prince Charming is a handsome prop for his mother’s scheme, and the film never quite settles what he is for.
Antonio Banderas and the Sword-Wielding Cat
Banderas is the standout here, in this paper’s judgment. He said his initial reason for taking the part was that he liked the first film. He said he was chosen for Puss because of his Spanish accent. Katzenberg approached him about the role while he was on Broadway in the musical Nine. The filmmakers showed him paintings of the character, and he realized how little Puss was. He said he built a strategy for playing the cat after he accepted, and that strategy set the personality.
You can feel that work in the finished film. Puss arrives as a hired killer — Harold brings him in to get rid of Shrek — and he is unable to overpower Shrek in a fight. So he switches sides. He was paid by Harold, he admits it, and he offers to help out of gratitude for having his own life spared. It is a clean turn.
“What happens after happily ever after?”
The Fairy Godmother’s Potions Factory
The plot around Puss is busy. The Fairy Godmother had a deal with Harold: her son Charming would rescue Fiona and marry her, and she would rule Far Far Away through him. She orders Harold to get rid of Shrek or lose his own happy ending. When Shrek, Donkey and Puss visit her potions factory to ask for something that will help Shrek appeal to Fiona, she refuses. Ogres, she says, do not deserve happy endings. They steal a bottle labeled “Happily Ever After” and wreck the factory on the way out. Shrek and Donkey drink it and fall asleep.
Read as criticism, the Fairy Godmother is the film’s cleanest invention. She is not a monster. She is a businesswoman with a contract and a son she wants on a throne, and her scheme runs through a marriage rather than a murder, which is a more familiar kind of cruelty.
Cody Cameron, Conrad Vernon and the Deep Bench
The voice work is deep. Aron Warner plays the Wolf. Kelly Asbury, one of the directors, plays the Page, an Elf and a Nobleman. Cody Cameron plays Pinocchio and the Three Pigs. Conrad Vernon, another director, plays the Gingerbread Man, Cedric, the Announcer, the Muffin Man and Mongo. That is a lot of parts for one film, and none of them feel like filler.
The new animation tools matter, too. The production used them to improve how each character looks, particularly Puss. That is the source’s point, and it is the right one to single out.
The $10 Million Salary Bump
The salary story is worth telling. The lead actors got a significant bump to $10 million each. At the time, that was among the highest contracts of their respective careers. In this paper’s reading, it marks the moment the Shrek series stopped being a gamble and became a machine.
For a viewer deciding whether to spend 92 minutes, the order of what actually matters here is short:
- Puss in Boots, the new character who carries the film’s best scenes
- The dinner argument between Shrek and Harold, the emotional center
- The Fairy Godmother’s factory, the best-built set piece
- Prince Charming, who is funny but thin
- The trip to Far Far Away, which is mostly travel
That order is this paper’s judgment, not a fact about the film.
What the Sequel Gets Right
The first Shrek was a fairy tale turned inside out. Shrek 2, as this paper reads it, is a family comedy wearing the same skin. It is less interested in tearing down the storybook and more interested in what a marriage costs when the in-laws are royalty. That is a smaller idea, and in this paper’s view a sturdier one. The potion plot, the factory, the ball — all of it exists to put pressure on one question: can these two stay together when the world keeps telling them they should not?
This paper’s main reservation is the middle stretch. Once Shrek and Donkey drink the potion and fall asleep, the film starts moving pieces around instead of telling jokes. That is a critical judgment, not a fact the source supplies. The film does recover. But the dip is real to this viewer.
A 7.5 Out of 10
Shrek 2 earns a 7.5 of 10. It is a strong sequel and a better-looking film than the original, and it introduced Puss in Boots, a character who became the franchise’s most durable asset. Banderas’s cat is the whole case for the movie, in this paper’s view. Everything else is competent, and competence is not nothing in a sequel.
What holds it at 7.5 rather than higher, as this paper sees it, is the shape. The opening is sharp, the dinner scene is the film’s best writing, and the finale lands. The middle wanders. A 92-minute movie should not have a slow patch, and this one does.
Still, the thing this film understands — and here this paper is speaking as criticism, not reporting — is that “happily ever after” is a promise made at the wrong end of the story. Shrek 2 picks up after the promise and finds two people who have to keep choosing each other in front of an audience that would rather they did not. That is a real idea, and the film plays it straight while everything around it is a gag. The ogres win. The in-laws come around. It costs something first, and that cost is what makes the ending worth the 92 minutes.
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