The Shrek Movies - Nostalgia Critic

come check us out at c2e2 august 5th through 7th hope to see you there [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] hello i'm the nostalgia critic i remember it so you don't have to guess i'm on a mike myers kick yeah i know another youtube critic talking about how amazing and groundbreaking shrek is how original this film has been praised left and right over the years and has become such a part of pop culture it still turns out merchandise memes and everyone seems to say most anime films nowadays owe a lot to either toy story or this whether it be the animation dialogue jokes moral story almost every cg film has something that traces back to the style of one of these two films so what the hell can i say about this movie and its sequels over 20 years after its release in 2001 well how about i don't really get into this film however that has changed a little bit over time a little i want to bring the point of view of someone who did not fall in love with the first movie but over time acknowledged there is an importance to it the film was one of the earliest animated features from dreamworks even trick's theme is still played whenever you see the dreamworks animation logo she waited in the dragon's keep in the highest room it stars mike myers as a gross loving ogre teamed up with a fast talking donkey played by eddie murphy performing the task of saving a princess played by cameron diaz for a selfish king played by john lithgow and in return having a bunch of fairy tale characters removed from his swamp attention all fairy tale things do not get comfortable so i guess i'll start with what i didn't like about the film what i do like about the film and despite my thoughts what relevance it has on today's culture and after that i'll move on to the air films to see if they had the same effect so first off let me say i was one of the few people that was legit excited to see this movie everyone complained how the trailers looked really lame and it was gonna be nothing but fart jokes but i could tell by the attitude of how it looked and how it sounded that there was gonna be a bit more bite to it so while a lot of people were surprised it has as much of an edge as it did i was surprised it didn't have even more i guess my first thought was this was going to be like the simpsons telling a fairy tale a very self-aware self-satirizing mean and adult take on what we grew up with think what disenchantment would become when i saw the film i definitely got elements of that but not as much as i was hoping i guess i just didn't think a lot of these jokes were that funny i love hearing eddie murphy talk but i'm never hearing any good writing out of him and if you don't mind me saying if that don't work your breath certainly will get the job done cause you definitely need some tic tacs or something cause your breath stinks myers is the same i feel like it's just his scottish stick which i want to laugh at but it's just not giving me any material to latch onto don't do that yes that yes yes do it okay i had a similar experience with the witches from hocus pocus or jim carrey from the first sonic the hedgehog movie they're funny performances just not saying funny things why is donkey finding out the dragon is female and charming her that great not emotionally ready for a commitment of uh this magnitude really is the word i'm looking for magnitude why is shrek explaining how an onion has layers that hilarious ogres are like onions end of story bye bye see you later why is fiona saying there's an arrow in your butt such amazing material was just oh i've seen this movie so many times because people always say i'm missing something with the humor and all these years later most of it just never grabbed me now that's not to say nothing is funny but we'll get to that in a bit at least the cynical world and offbeat characters could stand out and yeah they do for a time it loses me again though when it tries to act like it's giving this heartbreaking romance that's just the usual third act breakup with no laughs there's absolutely nothing new to it yet they're acting like they're giving us something new if it was something that was really interesting like a relationship issue people could identify with honestly a little bit more like in the later films i'd be okay but the mishearing of what the other says confusing them for not loving each other god i hate these i heard enough last night you heard what i said every word who could love a hideous ugly beast yeah let's see him sulk this is really gut-wrenching i haven't seen this a million other half-assed rom-coms we just stay on the moping and doping for a while and again nothing funny or new is added i don't follow why it's so emotional for so many people i guess for a lot of audiences they just accept this as part of the course and i'd be lying if i said i didn't understand i mean i have cliches i put up with to get to the stuff i really like sometimes those cliches are the things i really like these though just push all the wrong buttons for me everyone has their pet peeves they're hard for them to look over these cliches are some of mine okay i've laid into what i don't enjoy about the film let me get to what i do because there really is quite a bit i don't give the impression that i hate this movie because there are so many good things in it and the good things are whenever they try to do something different when it goes dark it goes mad dark i'm never seeing this with an audience and watching the scene where fiona sings to a bird and instead of tweeting along she sings so loud she blows it up that's already great but then she looks down at the nest of eggs everyone in the audience was like oh is she gonna raise them nope she cooks them right up that is some great [ __ ] the edgier moments in the film are where it comes alive the gingerbread man saint eat me blowing up innocent animals just for amusement even almost dropping a few swear words here and there i like it on this fight what he's basically saying the look of the film is also very unconventional it's both kind of pretty and kind of ugly at the same time disney famously goes out of its way to make everything as pretty as possible but here even the pretty stuff has something a little off about it and i'm sure that's intentional like it's a fairy tale but it's a very disturbed fairy tale you can tell something's up but probably the thing i like the most the moral how many times have you seen a disney film where they say don't judge a book by its cover and then the cover is changed i love disney and most of us get the messages they're trying to get across but they do renege on a lot of stuff a sacrifice isn't always a sacrifice think you're too ugly to get the woman you're right but hey believe hard enough and you can transform how you look well here the happy ending isn't both people turning beautiful it's both people turning into monsters and they're okay with that i remember again when i saw this with an audience and the scene began everyone around me was kind of whispering wouldn't it be kind of cool she stayed in ogre but they're like nah they wouldn't do that but they stick the landing and stand by their message and it's still a happy ending it isn't the physical beauty that changes it's the perception of it and this gets to one of honestly a few reasons why i think this film is still relevant today on top of the ending that doesn't cheat the audience over time i feel like there's more you can draw from it there's been a lot explored in terms of identity in the past few decades and when you see how fiona acts with her love of well oh girish stuff shrek loves it makes sense her outside now represents how she feels on the inside like most good lessons it's one that gets stronger the more you can connect it to both past and present predicaments but on top of that when this was released pg had a little bit more of a bite to it on that note so many parents are showing their kids this movie thinking it's the same level as g movies that most pg movies have become i've talked about this endlessly in the past but this is a situation where it might work to everyone's advantage this is for lack of a better term a hard pg sometimes it's even borderline pg-13 but everyone presents it as a kids film because pg means practically g now they show it along with disney and pixar movies in fact i think the understanding gets kids kinda start with simple fairy tales of disney move on to the more adult ideas of pixar and then the meaner and more satirical humor of shrek shrek is that movie i'm hearing more and more kids are shocked they're allowed to watch and they're being shown it left and right i think this is what return to oz or secret of nim was for me except the adult elements isn't how scary it is it's how quote unquote inappropriate it is dick size jokes animal cruelty jokes countless innuendos there is a rite of passage to seeing a film like this as a child but what makes it even more special is that it isn't just the humor that's more adult it really is the message the message is really good and i'm almost shocked it isn't done more often but part of that is kids love buying their pretty merchandise and in the end the characters aren't pretty but shrek kind of changed the mold on that as tons of shrek toys dolls shirts even people dressed up like the characters are still popular because everyone fell in love with them so much shrek went from what i thought was going to be a more adult geared family film to a kid's film that has out of nowhere adult jokes i think that makes it even funnier to kids tonally i guess it's a little inconsistent but comedically kids probably do laugh harder when they think they're being told a lesson but a surprisingly dark joke is told at the same time so yes even though a lot of it doesn't land with me i can see the importance of it and why it's such a good film for kids to grow up with it's the naughty disney the more cynical disney the disney that says yeah you know what you are a monster but monsters are cool they're not boring and maybe we all are in some unique way it's both pessimistic but kind of optimistic at the same time and in the end i think that means a lot more than whether or not it made this reviewer laugh i'm the nostalgia critic i remember it so you don't have to wait [ __ ] i still got three movies see doug play guardians of the galaxy fridays at 6 p.m central time on twitch we also got a new schedule and material six days a week hope to see you there [Music] [Applause] three years later in 2004 shrek 2 was released and i know you might think if i didn't get into the first one i probably wouldn't be able to get into this one actually it's not only my favorite shrek film but it is one of my favorite comedies of all time this is what i thought the first film was going to be and while it arguably doesn't have as big a cultural impact as the first one it's touching clever charming and it is so goddamn funny they throw kid jokes and adult jokes at you every chance they can in the foreground in the background verbally visually and all of them work in one way or another we got a white bronco heading east into the forest requesting backup i say we take the sword and knew them right here give them the bob baca treatment we represent the workers and all magical industries both evil and benign someday i will repay you unless of course i can't find you or if i forget the story of shrek and fiona have to meet her parents who don't yet know fiona's doing ogre and on top of that she married an ogre while trying to fight off her parents prejudice the fairy godmother and her son prince charming were originally slated to wed into the royal family and try to find a way to still make that happen this leads to a hit man or a cat being unleashed everybody getting transformed into beautiful alter egos and naturally people finding out what really matters to them and who they are putting the humor aside for a minute everything flows as perfectly as it could in a movie like this i love everybody in this flick they are so much more charming and likable to me i really like shrek and fiona as a couple in this one they're kind of like gomez and morticia they find comfort in the things many don't find comfort in and they have great chemistry donkey's writing finally matches his energy with so many hilarious lines but also a pretty fun rivalry between him and puss and boots played by antonio banderas i know you're feeling bad but you got to let your own hairy little licking sucker yes the evil plan is a little formulaic but even when they're being manipulated in kind of a third act breakup you can still sympathize with it shrek and fiona want to see each other happy and they're tricked into thinking they will be if they stay apart i love her if you really love her you'll let her go to me that's much more telling and heartbreaking than just misunderstanding what the other said the legit sacrificed their happiness for the others that's really pretty touching it makes the villains look even more evil this film is also crazy creative the different ways they get across different jokes and even action sequences is so outside the box and even get your adrenaline up i could watch the i need a hero song sequence a million times and never get bored of it the new characters are great the dilemmas are great even on the rare chance a joke doesn't get a hard laugh it's still cute because it's always tied into something interesting or likable about these characters i love when the bartender says why the long face to the horse quite a long face that's maybe one of the oldest and corniest jokes in existence but donkey gives a look like cute we're going through something here but cute if he didn't give that look i don't think this would have worked this movie has so much personality so much energy so much ingenuity and so much better writing it's one of the few flicks that comes dangerously close to being a perfect film for me i could put it on right now knowing every joke that was coming and still laugh my ass off as well as feel legit emotion for the characters too i know i probably lost a lot you with my thoughts on the first film just know though that not only do i love the second one in my opinion it's a comedic masterpiece and then you know this happened in 2007 shrek iii was released and well not a god alpha movie it's definitely not a good one either chuck discovers not only that he's going to be a father but also he might be king of far far away after fiona's father passes desperate to escape his responsibilities he tries to find another king and young arthur voiced by justin timberlake along the way he warms up how to be a father while looking after him but on top of that evil forces from the past returned to seize control this is a film that on paper should work all the pieces are there it seems like this is the next logical step but everything is just off not in a funny or clever way just in an off way well somebody better be dying i'm dying the timing is off the pacing is off even the villain is kind of off it's prince charming again yeah every film has a unique villain except this one where they just repeat the previous one hell half the previous ones there are some good bits like eric idol as the less than sensitive merlin is pretty funny oh proper red case you aren't you really messed up whoa the princesses using their dainty powers as a weapon isn't bad and occasional moments like pinocchio trying to double triple even quadruple talk to make it sound like he's not telling the truth you don't know where shrek is wouldn't it be inaccurate to assume that i couldn't exactly not say that the answer isn't almost partially incorrect but for the most part it just feels like an obligation movie in shrek 2 everything felt upped there was a passion and even a thankfulness that the first movie was such a hit so they went out of their way to make the funniest heartfelt but still edgiest comedy a family film would allow this feels like they're just doing the third one we have a franchise now what do people want to see as opposed to what do we want to make it got a couple laughs but it felt soulless and whatever you thought of the first two you definitely couldn't say they were soulless while the film still did well at the box office nobody was really repeating any of the lines or talking about any of the scenes they just watched which is probably why the series ended on a better but still not that great note in 2010 shrek forever after this is probably the most okay out of the series it's not insulting but it's not hilarious it's just another shrek sequel but i will say you can feel them trying to get the original magic back shark is getting sick of his daily routine being interrupted by fatherhood so he makes a deal with the schemer rumble stillskin he says he'll give him a day of relaxation if he can erase one day from his life having clearly never read anything in his life he just trusts him and doesn't see any tricks to it he accepts his offer and rumple erases the day he was born resulting in the future being ruined for many as he becomes king shrek teams up with an army of ripple ogres led by fiona and obviously comes to grips with how good he had it all along my biggest gripe is despite how sympathetic we are to shrek losing his free time he is way too mean to fiona in the opening saying he wishes he never saved her from the tower or had kids back when the world made sense back before you rescued me from the dragon's keeper exactly that's probably the biggest hurdle the film has because it's very hard to root for him after that with that said the jokes are better the different ways people are affected by shrek's absence are familiar but still pretty humorous what are you doing collecting my bounty what are you talking about cracker even some of the action is creative like the ogre is trying to fight the pipe hyper while being forced to dance to his flute you can definitely feel the effort but it's pretty impossible not to just see this as another film in a franchise there was always a feeling the first two movies were doing something new and exciting and this one while better than the previous is just kind of doing what's been set up as the shrek formula now shrek has an issue with his family life he'll learn to be thankful for what he has poison boots has to do the big eye thing some spell transformed something and comedic consequences ensue it's not bad but it's not special anymore apparently everyone thought the same thing because they haven't made another film since and honestly they don't have to even someone like me who's not in love with the original acknowledges the positive impact it's had and even then i did find a shrek film i fell in love with it was just off by one it's always rumored there's going to be another one but i don't know if people really want to see that well the fourth one isn't great it's a better send-off than the third one and the first two won over so many we don't need the table scraps it's kind of funny to think these raunchy mean kind of twisted movies are developing so many kids who are growing up right now but i really do see that more as a positive than a negative i like that they're the kids films that both children and adults can come together on and say we know you shouldn't be watching this but we're gonna show it to you anyway there's something special watching something that feels a little naughty compared to other kids stuff but still makes you laugh and even teaches you something rather important there is surprisingly a long lasting power to them and as long as parents and kids understand that inappropriate joke is okay a trick maybe it really is okay maybe even a lot better than okay [Music] i'm a nostalgia critic i remember it so you don't have to what are you talking about cracker hey everybody cameo for charity is still going great and all through the month of july we're doing raise a child praise the child is the nationwide leader in the recruitment and support of all prospective parents they host free information events and parent matching events to help support growing families and through the process of fostering and fostering to adopt they offer resources and guidance so if you want a cameo from me saying happy birthday or good luck or whatever just click on the link below and the money won't be going to me you'll be going to this wonderful organization and even if you're like screw your face i don't want a cameo from you at all well at least give this organization a look it's got a great rating on charity navigator and is well worth your time click on the link and check it out [Music] you

Channel: Channel Awesome

Views: 420,706

Keywords: channel awesome, nostalgia critic, doug walker, shrek, shrek reviews, shrek movie review, shrek 2, shrek the third, best shrek moments, worst shrek movies, shrek movie reaction, movie, review, best animated movies, dreamworks, dreamworks shrek, shrek review, shrek forever after, puss in boots, best sequel, shrek i need a hero, worst shrek movie, best shrek movie, shrek movies ranked, nostalgic, shrek memes, video essay film analysis, shrek 5, movie reviews, the shrek movies

Id: miC3Oo693O4

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/jessehechtcreative]

Surprised he didn’t mention Rumplestiltskin at all, really. He’s voiced by one of the crew, and I really liked him as a villain. NC took way too long with the first film, this should have been a longer review...