It's littered with industry in-jokes and has the ugliest hero in cartoon history, but when the hilarious satire Shrek hits our screens this summer, its makers will be laughing all the way to the bank. Garth Pearce reports
The annual race for the summer's biggest box-office contender is under starter's orders. Hollywood's top names are on their blocks, and the winner is likely to be ... a smelly green ogre. And he's animated. But this ogre, Shrek - who comes with the voice of Mike Myers, with a donkey who talks like Eddie Murphy and a lovely princess who looks and sounds just like Cameron Diaz - is in a film that is hilarious, original and absolutely brilliant.
Shrek uses almost human-like animation, and has a story with the underlying message that people should not be judged only on their looks, but on what they have to offer. The irony that such sentiments never, ever apply in Hollywood seems to have been lost amid all the buzz about the film, which received its premiere last week. The result, though, is not tainted or cynical. It's a special film, rather like Shakespeare in Love, Gladiator or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in the sense that it provokes the reaction: we've not seen anything quite like this before.
But don't be fooled by all the onscreen fun. The race to make Shrek a winner has also been fuelled by bitter conflict. Shrek, five years in the making, is the personal project of Jeffrey Katzenberg, the third man - with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen - in the triumvirate that founded DreamWorks in October 1994. Before that, Katzenberg was a top Disney man, the force behind The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, and one of Hollywood's biggest players. His rise came to an abrupt end when Disney's chief executive officer, Michael Eisner, refused to pick him as his number two in a key appointment. Katzenberg, now 50, was effectively plunged into cold storage, and after his subsequent resignation was left to take his case to court. The legal battle was finally settled in 1999 with a reputed Pounds 190m payoff.
But Katzenberg clearly believes revenge is a dish best served cold, and he's served it in mammoth portions with Shrek. The film has no qualms about poking fun at his former employer. Not only does it attack Disney at the heart of its empire, out- pacing its skills in animation, it's littered with cheeky references to Disney's giant theme parks, rides and cartoons. It is also pitching its American release on May 18, exactly a week before Disney's most expensive project ever, the Pounds 100m Pearl Harbor, currently odds-on favourite to be the year's biggest hit.
Film-studio executives, however, are surprised at the bluntness of the in-jokes. Even one of the stars, 55-year-old John Lithgow, the voice of the villain, Lord Farquaad - whose face, the magazine Entertainment Weekly this week suggested, bears a resemblance to Eisner's - admits: "I am amazed and hugely entertained at what they have got away with."
Shrek, based on a children's book by the award-winning author William Steig, is, in some ways, a classic fairy tale. But it also has fun unpicking all the elements of such yarns. Our ogre hero, living in his swamp and probably the ugliest cartoon good guy ever, is horrified to find a load of unwanted fairy-tale characters dumped on his doorstep by Lord Farquaad - including some of Disney's sacred cows, such as Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. Shrek enlists the help of a talking donkey (Murphy) and sets off to negotiate with Farquaad.
The lord lives in a castle with a distinct resemblance to Disney World's. And Shrek is greeted with a welcome from a mechanised singing group not unlike the ones in the It's a Small World boat ride, then offered the opportunity for an automatic photo of his arrival, as well as parking in the "Lancelot" area. Farquaad does a deal. He will rid Shrek of all the fairy-tale characters if he can rescue his future bride, Princess Fiona (Diaz), from a tower guarded by a dragon. Even that mission is almost wrecked by another Disney favourite, Robin Hood - with a French accent - and a collection of singing'n'dancing Merry Men.
"We basically took every fairy tale and turned it on its side," says Shrek's producer, Aron Warner. "Nothing is sacred, and every fairy tale gets roasted. These characters are ripe for parody." But the nervousness during the long filming process was palpable. Had they gone too far?
Andrew Adamson, who, with Vicky Jenson, was making his directorial debut, admits: "We showed every scene to lawyers as we went along. We did not want to be sued by Disney." During an extensive round of interviews in LA last weekend, the words of explanation I heard most were: "It is all in the public domain."
Katzenberg, ever the sharp manipulator, was being particularly cute. When I asked about his long legal battle with Disney, he said: "I don't remember." And the vast payday? "I don't remember." How about Lord Farquaad, a 3ft midget, being compared to the 6ft 3in Eisner? "That is in the imagination." What about revenge? "That is certainly not an agenda of mine." He smiled throughout this exchange, and he's clearly enjoying his moment. "We have a tremendous amount of respect for Disney and what they have achieved in all things," he said. "Without that respect, we could not be playful with them. I am sure nobody will be offended and they will see the joke."
The only joke Disney has seen so far came in the form of DreamWorks' lamentable cartoon flop The Road to El Dorado, with voices by Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline. They laughed themselves silly over that one. But the other three DreamWorks animated features so far - The Prince of Egypt, Antz and Chicken Run - have made a fortune and dug deep into Disney territory. With Shrek, Katzenberg was leaving nothing to chance, whatever the cost. A moment of truth came when Mike Myers, having completed his voice recordings, suddenly announced that he did not like the results. A little over Pounds 2.75m of a reputed Pounds 41m budget was poured into revoicing. Myers now delivers in an accent that I am assured comes from the west of Scotland, though it sounds more like a cross between his performance as Fat Bastard in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Sean Connery on an off day.
"I was amazed at the commitment," admits Myers. "They had to throw out all my animation, too, because you are filmed when reading, and each scene of your character is matched to how you pronounce the words. Jeffrey Katzenberg told me that this had never been done before in the history of animation - and I believe him." Myers's real voice is a curious mixture of Canadian (his birthplace), the Liverpool accent of his parents and both London and the West Coast, where he has worked. "I realised Shrek needed to sound like a mixture of vulnerable, hurt, angry and dismissive," he says. "A Scottish accent somehow captures all that."
There were problems of a different kind with Diaz. Oddly, these stemmed from the sophistication of the animation used on Shrek, which models every element onscreen on its real-life counterpart. The way a body moves, for example, was translated into a computer model with 585 separate components, covering not just the skeleton but muscles, tissues, fat layers and skin. Even the way light reflects off skin was built in. Then 180 animation controls were used to create the minutest gestures in each face. The same painstaking techniques were applied to everything from the way grass moves or water pours. Each second of action took the 25-strong animation team a day to complete. But the result is that what is on screen is astoundingly lifelike.
In Diaz's case, though, too lifelike. "Shrek is far above anything that has been achieved in computer animation," says the supervising animator Raman Hui. "But this was a step too far. This film is about animation and fantasy - not the real thing." Diaz was unnerved by the onscreen cloning. "It was like looking in the mirror," she says. "I thought to myself, 'If this is the future, then perhaps they don't need actors.'"
None of the star actors met during the years of filming. "It was the oddest experience," says Lithgow. "I once worked with Mike, but I have never met Eddie Murphy in my life and only met Cameron by chance on one occasion at a hamburger shop.
I would stand in a studio, with an actor to read the other lines, feeling like one of those quiz-show contestants who go into a soundproof booth. And I cannot believe that, after all these years, my biggest success by a mile is going to be with a movie in which nobody sees me."
Of Shrek's potential for enormous success, there can be little doubt. On May 12, it will be screened in competition at Cannes - the first animated film to be honoured in this way since Peter Pan in 1953. What will the reaction be at Disney if the film actually wins? Worse still, could it go all the way to the Oscars? For Katzenberg, it could be payback time.
