In fact, the roadmap for Shrek had already been drawn years earlier with The Princess Bride, a fractured fairytale that found the right balance between knowing, gently absurdist plays on storybook tradition and a sincere affirmation of their power. For years, Shrek had seemed like a disaster in the making вЂ“ writers assigned to polish up the script likened it to вЂњthe GulagвЂќ вЂ“ but the conceptual hook of its fairytale universe, combined with the buddy chemistry of Myers and Eddie Murphy as Donkey, and Cameron Diaz as Fiona, an up-for-anything damsel-in-distress, was stronger than they could have realized. Myers was only just past peak of his popularity when he replaced fellow SNL alum Chris Farley as Shrek, still riding high off two hit Austin Powers movies and still powerful enough to get DreamWorks to shrug its shoulders over allowing him to redo the part in Scottish. Their replacement? Chiefly a flatulent ogre voiced by Mike Myers, who deploys the same accent that carried him through the All Things Scottish sketches on Saturday Night Live. Those once-upon-a-times were now rendered stodgy and lame, literally toilet paper. Worse yet, it encouraged a destructive, know-it-all attitude toward the classics that made any earnest engagement with them seem like a waste of time. But itвЂ™s worth pointing out how comprehensively bad its legacy remains, opening up the floodgates for other major studios to pile celebrities into recording booths, feed them committee-polished one-liners and put those lines in the mouths of sassy CGI animals or human-ish residents of the uncanny valley. ItвЂ™s hard to account for why Shrek hit the cultural moment as squarely as it did вЂ“ other than, you know, people seemed to enjoy it вЂ“ or why it will be celebrated in 20th anniversary pieces other than this one. (Liv UllmannвЂ™s jury left it empty-handed, alas.) Even the stuffed shirts at the Cannes film festival, who usually separated Hollywood summer fare from its official selections, brought it into the competition slate, where it premiered alongside new work from world masters like David Lynch, Jean-Luc Godard, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Jacques Rivette.

After flailing in its early efforts to keep up with Disney вЂ“ the animation house of which its co-founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, was credited with reviving вЂ“ DreamWorks had finally hit pay dirt, raising the possibility that it might become a viable challenger to established major studios. The curse has eased but not lifted.ДЄnd yet Shrek was a sensation with critics and audiences in 2001. Three of those terrible movies were sequels to Shrek and one was a spin-off with a sequel in the works. It would influence many unfunny, awful-looking computer-animated comedies that copied its formula of glib self-reference and sickly sweet sentimentality. Twenty years later, that flushing sound seems to signify the moment when blockbuster animation circled the drain.

Donkey and shrek