SHREK (2001) **1/2 Ok, it's definitely time to start getting the Frankenstein of computer graphics geeks under control. Not based on this, mind you-this is cool-but on what it will no doubt set off. Like Moog synthesizers in metal bands in the '70s...next thing you know all these great pianists are playing 'em, as if they're good. Don't get me wrong, there's a place for Moogs (Uriah Heep), just as there's a place for computer graphic animation (here), the problem is the proliferation of bad ideas that they put in the heads of others. So I like the computer animation, here, but I still can't help thinking that the movie might have been better without it. I mean, let's face it-this is a film that works because of Eddie Murphy's voice. Think how much funnier it could have been with Eddie romping around in a donkey suit made by an underfunded high school drama department, replete with mechanical ears and tail. On the other hand, could Eddie have risen to the occasion? Computer animation is an even more extreme mask than beards, hats, make-up, or even burkas. Maybe Eddie was able to cut loose so brilliantly in some part because it wasn't him on screen. Maybe the visual donkey released him from the distraction of appearances, or some secret shame. Ha, ha, Eddie? For whatever reason, his animated self's voice is more animated than most anything else he's done in nearly two decades: absolutely brilliant, rising and falling like a gurgling tidal wave, absolutely uninhibited yet timed to perfection, utter poetry not rap. The musical music also deserves some consideration. I don't know who decreed that feature length cartoons have to be broken up at five minute intervals by musical interludes, but it's (unfortunately) followed here. The good news is that most of the selections are ok, and that there's no Phil Collins or Elton John. The even better news is that John Cale's rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is so beautiful, so sublime that it...it doesn't transcend everything around it (although it does) so much as elevate the entire undertaking. Absolutely glorious, and the closing medley builds on the strange and sudden mood of genius by assuring the young that geniuses like to be silly and have a good time.
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