Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: Puss in Boots

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“Bootmaker, I’m looking for a boot as light as air and fast as the wind. A boot that makes no sound, leaves no tracks.” “You’re in luck, I’ve got one pair left!”
– A feline acquires his defining bit of footwear

Fairytales are full of trickster mentors that aid the hero in their quest. The amount of stories where the mentor takes the form of a wily animal are beyond counting. Cats are a particularly popular choice for the role on account of folklorists making their natural stealthiness and hunting prowess shorthand for cunning and guile. And there’s no fairy tale feline more renowned for their craftiness than Puss in Boots.

Walking into this review I assumed Puss in Boots was going to be a Charles Perrault original, which is how I was introduced to it, but the story actually has Italian roots. The oldest known version is 1550’s Constantino Fortunato, or “Fortunate Constantine” by author and fairytale collector Giovanni Francesco Straparola. One of several tales included in the two-volume collection The Facetious Nights, the story is about a poor boy who marries a princess thanks to a clever cat. It’s interesting to note that this cat isn’t just a magical talking cat but a fairy in disguise; a detail that fell by the wayside in future retellings. Writer Girolamo Morlini wrote his version of Puss in Boots shortly afterwards (fair turnabout since Straparola often borrowed from Morlini), followed by Giambatta Basile in 1634. Then Charles Perrault popularized the tale in France as part of his fairy tale collection (the same that also launched the character of Mother Goose), and the feline’s fame hasn’t dwindled since. He’s even well-known in Japan, where a popular film by Toei Animation has made him the studio’s mascot.

Puss in Boots is one of those fairytales that falls into a gray area where the moral is concerned…in that there isn’t really one at all. If you go by a purely textual reading of the story, the takeaway is that lying, cheating and stealing will get you what you want without any consequences; not much of a lesson (but one that’s far too relevant if you look at the current state of the Republican Party). On the flip side, Puss uses his wits to make the most of his and his master’s lousy circumstances. He’s simply doing what he can with what little he has to improve their situation. The story takes place in a society that favors the first-born son, so it’s easy to root for the youngest son stuck with naught but a wisecracking mouse-catcher while his selfish brothers have the means to support themselves. The men and monsters Puss deceives are largely deserving of his trickery.

Tying into that is the unusual choice of clothing this cat in footwear. It’s not just for aesthetics, I assure you. Shoes were a luxury afforded only to young people of the upper-class in the Middle Ages because they were outgrown or worn through so quickly. As such, boots were a sign of wealth and status. In both the original fairytale and today’s episode, the king refuses to grant Puss an audience until he learns he wears boots. Appearances and presentation played as all-encompassing a role in society then as they do now, but the story of Puss in Boots shows that anyone with brains and the ability to pass off as refined can game the system. Make what you will of that.

Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: The Three Little Pigs

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“Okay listen up because I’m only gonna say this once: open the door…or I’m gonna huff and I’m gonna puff and I’m gonna…blow your house in, whaddaya think of that?”
– The Big Bad Wolf’s ultimatum, as delivered by the only actor who could do it justice

All right, we’ve finally come to an episode many of you have been waiting for. For some fans this is peak Faerie Tale Theatre, and I agree with them. This outing has everything: a funderful cast (my way of saying fun+wonderful), clever writing, and humor coming out the wazoo. You’re in for a treat.

But first, the obligatory story behind the story.

This is another English fairytale brought to us by folklorist Joseph Jacobs in 1890, four years before he published his findings on Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ origins. Jacobs credited fellow nursery rhyme collector James Halliwell-Phillips as the source of The Three Little Pigs story. The earliest known version has a very different cast from the one we know: instead of three pigs and a wolf, it’s three pixies and a fox, and their houses were made of wood, stone and iron rather than straw, sticks and bricks. The reason behind the changes in the definitive English version are unclear; one theory is that the divergence comes from someone mishearing the word “pixie” as “pigsie”.

The fable has a few international variations, though much less than what I’ve come to expect doing this research each month. Italian retellings dating from the same era Jacobs published his story replace the pigs with geese. The one Joel Chandler Harris recorded in his collection of Uncle Remus tales appropriation of African mythology has six pigs instead of three. The one consistent theme running through them all is the moral of hard work, resourcefulness and careful planning paying off.

That’s not to say this story has some underlying darkness to it. In some iterations, even the perspective-flipped The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, the wolf eats the first two pigs after blowing down their houses. The original fairytale also ends with the third little pig tricking the wolf, killing and eating him instead! This has been toned down in future retellings, understandably so. Regardless, the rule of three in effect as well as the fun nonsense phrases like “not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin” has helped this tale remain a memorable one. Now, let’s see how Faerie Tale Theatre puts their spin on it.

Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: The Princess and The Pea

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“That’s…IMPOSSIBLE! Nobody could feel a PEA beneath TWENTY MATTRESSES!!” “The Queen is almost as clever as the Fool.”
– Prince Richard and the Fool discovering the Queen’s implausible test and earning their snarky reviewer cred simultaneously

If you’ve ever been in community theater or took it up while in school, chances are you’ve been in either of the following productions at least once: Bye Bye Birdie, or Once Upon A Mattress. They’re frothy, light and fun shows that remain popular because they’re so easy to put on. Oddly enough, that was the main criticism Hans Christian Andersen received after penning the fairy tale Mattress is based on, The Princess and The Pea (my, it’s been a while since we’ve covered one of his narratives, hasn’t it?) Critics disliked the story’s laid-back tone and lack of morals and ripped into it like an old-school film auteur when asked about superhero movies. Despite the chilly reception, time was kind to The Princess and The Pea; when Andersen passed away, it was considered one of his most beloved stories.

As ol’ Hans tended to create his own fables as opposed to gathering them for posterity like the Brothers Grimm, I expected this to be a wholly original tale. Remarkably, there’s some precedence set by folktales spanning throughout Europe and Asia focusing on sensitivity as a mark of femininity. Sweden’s The Princess Who Lay On Seven Peas has the princess prove her pedigree by sleeping on, well, seven peas; she’s already aware of the test, though, thanks to being warned by her cat. An Italian story has a prince search for the most sensitive woman to make his bride, ending with him marrying a lady whose foot is injured by a falling flower petal. India’s variation, The Three Delicate Wives of Virtue-Banner, features a king solving a riddle about which of the maharajah’s wives is the most fragile. The earliest known story, however, is the medieval Islamic tale al-Nadirah. Though it’s likely all the previous stories originate from this one, the ending is less than happy. Princess al-Nadirah falls in love at first sight with the Persian king Shaupur I, betrays her father to him, and marries him – all while he’s in the middle of besieging her city, making this the first instance of Stockholm Syndrome before the term was even coined. She has trouble sleeping once they start sharing a bed, though. The culprit is a myrtle leaf found under the mattress. When Shapur asks how Nadirah can be so alarmingly delicate, she says it stems from how well her dad treated her. Shapur, appalled by how she could throw such a caring father under the bus, calls her out on her ingratitude and executes her. Well, there’s your morals for ya, backstab your family to bed a usurper and you get what you deserve.

Returning to the topic at hand, why has The Princess and The Pea grown into such a well-known fairy tale? What is it about it that makes it ripe for retelling? Some researchers believe it’s one of Andersen’s biting critiques of the upper-class; that the infamous mattress test pokes fun at the ridiculous measures taken by the nobility to prove their bloodlines pure. Others view it as another self-insert where Andersen expresses his longing to be part of the elite, and the extreme sensitivity he felt trying to fit in. As for me personally, the ridiculous and mirthful nature of the story is a nice break from some of Andersen’s more infamously dour tales. It’s endlessly optimistic, with the time-honored messages of not letting appearances deceive you and what’s on the inside that counts standing fully at the forefront – and it so easily lends itself to the romantic comedy genre. Today’s entry is the prime example of that. It boasts a lead in need of a partner who turns his worldview around, a love interest who’s more than what she seems, a comic relief best friend, a domineering mother figure and false-flag fiancées who provide obstacles, misunderstandings galore…the only thing that’s missing is a director’s credit for Garry Marshall.

Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: Hansel and Gretel

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“Nibble, nibble, little mouse, who’s that nibbling at my house?”
– The Witch, before showing her claws

Hey, the chimney smoke is in the shape of the Witch, I never noticed that until now…

Oh yes, the review.

It’s easy to forget that fairytales weren’t written exclusively for children all those centuries ago. They were recorded with the intention of preserving cultural heritage passed down orally that was on the brink of being lost. While the Brothers Grimm would later re-edit their findings for a younger, more conservative audience, the German folklore they published had no shortage of, ahem, grimness in their pages. This was due in large part to how awful living conditions were in the Middle Ages. It was an era of deadly plagues, drastic income inequality, wisdom and progress continuously curtailed by superstition and theocracy, human rights perpetually being violated, and the constant threat of war and death hanging over people’s heads.

Ah, sure glad we don’t have to deal with all that in these enlightened times.

When it comes to the origins of today’s tale, scholars tend to point towards a massive famine that overtook Europe in the early fourteenth century. Families would turn elder and younger members out of their homes in order to hoard whatever food was left for themselves; there’s even been reports of people resorting to cannibalism. Combine all that with folks’ fear of witches and the unknown lurking in the woods, and you’ve got the ingredients for a deliciously dark story. Even Jacob and Wilhelm, with their penchant for revisionism, couldn’t curb Hansel and Gretel’s eerie undertones. The only major edit they made later on was changing the mother who threw her children to the proverbial wolves into a wicked stepmother; trust me, I’ll have more to say about that when we get to Snow White.

Now there’s a lot one could unpack with Hansel and Gretel and the deeper significance of the motifs it shares with other fairy tales: the forest serving as both sanctuary and no man’s land, the two faces of the mother and witch belonging to the same patriarchal grotesque, the sanctity of the home and how choosing familial loyalty over independence leads to a just reward, but let’s instead focus on the children themselves. Hansel and Gretel’s journey is symbolic of a child’s rocky passage to adulthood, and how they must rely on their wits to survive a cruel world beyond their doorstep. Similar stories of children undergoing a transformative odyssey through the wilderness into maturity can be found in every culture around the world, from Southern India (Kadar and Cannibals) to South Africa (The Story of the Bird that Made Milk). Certain Russian folktales involve a girl cast out into the woods by her cruel stepmother and traveling to a chicken-legged house belonging to the cannibalistic witch Baba Yaga. She completes the impossible tasks the witch sets for her by being kind to the animals, makes a daring escape using the gifts she’s earned, and returns home, ending her stepmother’s reign of terror. Sound familiar? Even Italian author Giambatta Basile, originator of Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty, created his own take on the fable. Nennillo e Nennella starts off with the usual parental abandonment in the woodlands, but goes off the rails into royalty, piracy and some Jonah and the Whale-type shenanigans (seriously, read this one, it’s a hoot). And it doesn’t stop at the written word, either. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, the seventh entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, explicitly weaves the story of Hansel and Gretel into its themes as part of Craven’s efforts to return to the series back to its terrifying, more serious fantasy origins. The iconic thriller Night of the Hunter also has shades of Hansel and Gretel: two children are forced out of their home by their stepparent and find shelter in the Depression-blighted countryside with an old crone; the twist is the crone becomes their selfless protector.

The point I’m trying to make is, when done right, this fairy tale can be a rich, emotional experience, a dark but thrilling and ultimately triumphant roller coaster ride that captures a child’s view of the world in all its terror and wonder.

And Faerie Tale Theatre…it doesn’t do it right. It hardly comes close, for a number of reasons. But if you like to plod through long depressing morality plays that consistently thrash you over the head with its mean-spiritedness and bleak atmosphere, then this is the outing for you.

Christmas Shelf Reviews: The Little Match Girl (2006)

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My introduction to the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Little Match Girl was through a picture book with beautiful illustrations by Rachel Isadora which I discovered in second grade. I was instantly endeared to the poor protagonist and enchanted by the wonders she experienced – though the ending left me in a state of shock. I didn’t know what to make of it. The story fell out of sight and out of mind until the Platinum Edition DVD of The Little Mermaid came out. Packaged with it was a new animated short from Disney retelling the Match Girl’s tale.

There’s an odd bit of animated symmetry this shares with The Little Mermaid: both mark the finale of a time-honored animation method. The Little Mermaid was the last film from Disney to use traditionally inked cels before switching over to the CAPS system. The Little Match Girl, meanwhile, was the final Disney product to use CAPS. While the artistry on display left me in awe each time, I rarely revisited this short on account of how it stayed true to the story. And since Andersen had a penchant for downer endings…you get the idea.

This short is brought to us by Don Hahn and Roger Allers, the producer and director of The Lion King respectively, and anyone who’s seen that movie can verify their ability to leave you a sobbing wreck. The Little Match Girl was supposed to be a part of a Fantasia continuation that was tragically canceled; as such, the story is told solely through the visuals and set to the emotional strains of Alexander Borodin’s String Quartet No.2 in D Minor (my fellow theater nerds will also recognize this as the music behind Kismet’s “And This is My Beloved”).

So, are you ready to start off your holidays as a tear-streaked mess on the floor?

Christmas Shelf Reviews: Duck Tales 2017: “Last Christmas!”

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I don’t think it’s a big secret that Gravity Falls is my favorite series from Disney. Not just animated series, I mean out of everything the channel ever churned out. It was mysterious, funny and occasionally frightening, with deep themes of family and growing up and some of the most well-written television characters to come from the 2010s. When it bowed out after two near-perfect seasons, it left some enormous shoes to fill. What show could possibly live up to the standards it set?

Well, it turns out the answer was one no one asked for, but we’re sure as hell thankful we got anyway.

Hot take for y’all, especially from someone who grew up in the 90’s and enjoyed the hell out of the original DuckTales: the 2017 reboot blows its predecessor out of the water. It takes the fun, creative adventures from the first series, adds a much-needed measure of character arcs and development (Huey, Dewey and Louie have actual distinct personalities now!) and amps it up with a huge dose of heart and enough lore borrowed from the Carl Barks and Don Rosa comics to win over even the most jaded fans. Also, as opposed to his unceremonious draft into the navy in the first series, Donald Duck finally has a part to play in the new adventures! (Well, in 13 out of the 65 of them anyway…way to get my hopes up, Disney.) By the time I was halfway through the first season I thought to myself, “Yes, this is it. This is the successor to Gravity Falls,” (though The Owl House definitely ties with that sentiment as well, and Amphibia isn’t too far behind).

I’m woefully behind on Season 3, but am well aware that they’re bringing in more characters and plots from the other classic Disney Afternoon series that were hinted at since the very start, and I can’t wait to see how they’re re-interpreted. On a similar note, since this episode deals with some major revelations from the tail end of Season One that have ramifications for the rest of the series, I must warn you that this review will have spoilers.

April Review: The Pagemaster (1994)

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I expected this movie to have a few votes from those who remembered it as kids. I never expected it to win by a landslide. Lesson learned: never underestimate a nostalgic kids’ movie from the ’90s.

Once upon a time, David Kirschner, producer of An American Tail among other things, took his daughters to the New York Public Library. This visit inspired him to write a story about a fantastical adventure that would get kids excited about reading. The result was The Pagemaster, a 1994 box-office bomb that would go on to develop a cult following among children like me who grew up watching it. Animation historians tend to lump The Pagemaster in with the likes of Thumbelina or Quest For Camelot: 90s features that tried to coast off the success of Disney’s Renaissance films yet failed to match their caliber. But actually, trailers for The Pagemaster played in theaters and on home video a good four years before the movie was released…it was still in production for most of that time so the amount of influence Disney had on it is up for debate, but the point remains. I’m willing to bet what played a major part in its delay was the myriad of problems that cropped up during the filmmaking, from David Kirschner suing the Writers Guild of America for not receiving the sole story credit he felt was owed, to the plot being rewritten in the middle of the animation process, which is never a good thing. I’ve also heard stories about Macaulay Culkin being a diva on set, but knowing what we know now about his abusive father explains a lot so I’m not holding that against him.

And here’s another fun fact I dug up while doing my research: apparently Stephen King of all people wrote the treatment for The Pagemaster, which certainly explains the film’s more horrific elements. Does this means this movie is technically part of the King multiverse? I can see Richard hanging out with The Losers Club on weekends and trying to avoid killer clowns and langoliers in his spare time.

Though it was released under the 20th Century Fox banner, The Pagemaster was the first of only two animated films created by Turner Feature Animation, an off-shoot of Hanna-Barbera founded by media mogul Ted Turner. In hindsight, it’s not surprising that Turner had a hand in this children’s flick with an educational message. Let’s not forget the last animated project he invested himself in was all about teaching kids environmentalism in the cheesiest way possible.

But unlike Captain Planet, does The Pagemaster hold up after all these years? Will it get kids sucked into the magic of reading? And how long can I go without forcing in a Home Alone reference? Read on and find out.

January Review: Fantasia 2000

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Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general. And if I may be self-indulgent for a moment, it’s also one of the reviews that I’m the proudest of. Fantasia is a visual, emotional masterpiece that marries music and art in a manner few cinematic ventures have come close to replicating. One question that remains is what my thoughts on the long-gestated sequel is –

…you might wanna get yourselves some snacks first.

As anyone who read my review on the previous film knows, Fantasia was a project ahead of its time. Critics and audiences turned their noses up at it for conflicting reasons, and the film didn’t even make it’s budget back until twenty-something years later when they began marketing it to a very different crowd.

“I don’t wanna alarm you dude, but I took in some Fantasia and these mushrooms started dancing, and then there were dinosaurs everywhere and then they all died, but then these demons were flying around my head and I was like WOOOOOAAAHHH!!”

“Yeah, Fantasia is one crazy movie, man.”

“Movie?”

Fantasia’s unfortunate box office failure put the kibosh on Walt Disney’s plans to make it a recurring series with new animated shorts made to play alongside handpicked favorites. The closest he came to following through on his vision was Make Mine Music and Melody Time, package features of shorts that drew from modern music more than classical pieces.

Fast-forward nearly fifty years later to the golden age known as the Disney Renaissance: Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney surveys the new crop of animators, storytellers, and artists who are creating hit after hit and have brought the studio back to his uncle’s glory days, and thinks to himself, “Maybe now we can make Uncle Walt’s dream come true.” He made a good case for it, but not everyone was on board. Jeffrey Katzenberg loathed the idea, partly because he felt the original Fantasia was a tough act to follow (not an entirely unreasonable doubt) but most likely due to the fact that the last time Disney made a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, it drastically underperformed (even though the reasons for that are entirely Katzenberg’s fault. Seriously, watch Waking Sleeping Beauty and tell me you don’t want to punch him in the nose when Mike Gabriel recalls his opening weekend phone call).

Once Katzenberg was out of the picture, though, Fantasia 2000, then saddled with the less dated but duller moniker Fantasia Continued, got the go-ahead. Many of the sequences were made simultaneously as the animated features my generation most fondly remembers, others were created to be standalone shorts before they were brought into the fold. Since it was ready in time for the new millennium, it not only got a name change but a massive marketing campaign around the fact that it would be played on IMAX screens for a limited run, the very first Disney feature to do so. As a young Fantasia fan who had never been to one of those enormous theaters before, I begged and pleaded my parents to take me. Late that January, we traveled over to the IMAX theater at Lincoln Center, the only one nearest to us since they weren’t so widespread as they are now, and what an experience it was. I can still recall the feeling of awe at the climax of Pines of Rome, whispering eagerly with my mom at how the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue looked like a giant Etch-A-Sketch, and jumping twenty feet in the air when the Firebird’s massive eyes popped open. But did later viewings recapture that magic, or did that first time merely color my perception?

October Review: Coraline (2009)

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Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Hold it for three seconds. And as you slowly exhale, say to yourself:

Henry Selick directed Coraline, not Tim Burton.

Henry Selick directed Coraline, not Tim Burton.

HENRY SELICK DIRECTED CORALINE, NOT TIM BURTON.

“Shelf? You got something you want to get off your chest before the review?”

“Yes indeedy do, Cynicism.”

I was waiting in line to meet Neil Gaiman at a Barnes and Noble book signing and a group of people behind me kept parroting a certain widespread falsehood to each other that drives me up a wall. Coraline was Henry Selick’s long-anticipated return to form after Monkeybone, and the film was advertised as being from the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas. HOWEVER, since that film tends to have Tim Burton’s name preceding its title, people often assume that he directed it. Ergo, those folks assumed Tim Burton directed Coraline and proceeded to bombard me with facts they pulled out of fat air to back themselves up. Never mind that a two-second glance at Wikipedia on their phones could have cleared all this up. And never mind that by attributing this stunning fantasy-horror masterpiece that Stephen King and Guillermo Del Toro wish they could have invented to the wrong man further pushes whom I consider the Chuck Jones of stop-motion animation into undeserved obscurity.

I corrected them on their erroneous assumption and pointed out that the genius we were about to meet would most likely agree with me as he himself has been trying to dispel this notion for the past decade. But they stubbornly refused to listen. No, these idiots, with all the bullheaded conviction of a staunch flat-earther, were determined to prove that Tim Burton really helmed Coralne. After all, what would Neil Gaiman, the man who wrote the book Coraline was based on and handpicked Henry Selick himself to direct the movie, know about it anyway? I quickly gave up and tried to focus on not word vomiting once I finally got to shake hands with my all-time favorite writer. In the end, I walked away with a copy of The Art of Neil Gaiman signed with a very encouraging message from the man himself, and no doubt the losers behind me ended up doing the walk of shame after Gaiman the Mighty lay waste to their narrow minds and dealt their egos an irreparable blow.

Anyways, I love Coraline. I love the animation, I love its creativity, I love most of the characters, I love how it doesn’t cop out when it comes to the scary elements, and I love how this was my introduction to Neil Gaiman’s work and to Laika Animation. As someone who is always eager to support new original animated films, I will forever kick myself for not seeing it in its original theatrical 3D because the visuals, well, they pop.

“In our defense, it was halfway through freshman year of college and we were too busy trying to stay on top of everything. Not to mention something as simple as a trip to the movies could have bankrupted us then.”

August Review: Shrek (2001)

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Oh, Shrek. Where to begin with this guy?

That’s a rhetorical question, I know exactly where to start. It all comes back to one man, a man with a vision: to stick it to his former boss.

We meet again, Katzenberg.

There’s a lot of history and tangled truths behind the birth of Shrek, and Jeffrey Katzenberg is at the dead center of it. I was sorely tempted to make this another two-parter like the Black Cauldron review to go into more detail, but I was already running behind schedule with March of the Wooden Soldiers so here’s a slightly condensed version:

Between the disaster that was the making of The Black Cauldron and the glorious premiere of The Lion King, Katzenberg picked up a few tricks when it came to making acclaimed animated features. Then in 1994, Disney CEO Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter accident, and the Magic Kingdom was torn asunder as Michael Eisner took the reins and began his descent into madness. Katzenberg hoped that he would inherit Eisner’s former position of Vice President, but here’s where things get tricky. Katzenberg claims that Eisner fired him when he made his ambitions known; but the way Eisner tells it, Katzenberg was impatient, ungrateful, took way too much credit for the studio’s successes, and left of his own accord. Either way, it was a notoriously bitter separation with deep ramifications for the animation industry. Apparently Disney didn’t learn their lesson with Don Bluth because once again they wound up creating their biggest competitor – and this time, they were here to stay.

Katzenberg teamed up with David Geffen and the one and only Steven Spielberg to create Dreamworks SKG, the first major studio to truly rival Disney when it came to making animated motion pictures. The most important thing to them was to not be like every other feature on the market. For the first few years they flipped between making some great traditionally animated films that have been swept under the rug (Spirit, Sinbad and The Road to El Dorado are enjoying a comfortable cult status online and The Prince of Egypt only just got upgraded to blu-ray last year. Still waiting on that Broadway version, though), and openly trying to one-up their direct competition (when not teaming up Aardman to produce the same but with effort and a soul). Pixar announces their next movie is about ants? Dreamworks comes out the following week and says they’re doing a CGI movie about ants. Pixar says they’re making a film about fish? Dreamworks makes one about fish the following year. They make movies for children of all ages but with A-list actors, no Alan Menken musical numbers, and attituuuuude, dude. And nowhere is that jealousy and vitriol towards Disney more obvious than in what we’re reviewing today.

Shortly after Dreamworks was founded, co-head of the motion pictures division Laurie MacDonald gave Katzenberg a book by esteemed children’s author/illustrator William Steig simply called “Shrek!”; a fractured fairytale where a fire-breathing ogre was the hero, a donkey was his noble steed, and his happily ever after is defeating a valiant knight and marrying a princess even uglier than he is. He took one look at it, saw how it turned the traditional Disney-style fantasy he helped re-popularize in the 90’s on its head, the potential for even more slams at Disney fairytales and celebrity voice casting that worked gangbusters with Aladdin and had this to say:

Shrek evolved far beyond its humble literary origins into a green middle finger pointed at Katzenberg’s former workplace, and audiences and critics ate it up because nobody had dared to do such a thing before. And I’m not gonna lie, I loved this movie when I was a kid. But over time, mostly thanks to Katzenberg’s penchant for quantity over quality, Shrek became the very thing it was parodying: a shallow, over-hyped, over-marketed fairytale cash grab, and it’s affected my view of the original installment somewhat.

Well, it’s time for this non-star to get my game on and hopefully get paid. Let’s look at Dreamworks’ watershed studio-defining blockbuster…Shrek.