Shrek 2
Shrek 2 is a 2004 American animated fantasy comedy film loosely based on the 1990 children's picture book Shrek! by William Steig. Directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, and Conrad Vernon (in Vernon's feature directorial debut) from a screenplay by Adamson, Joe Stillman, and the writing team of J. David Stem and David N. Weiss, it is the sequel to Shrek (2001) and the second installment in the Shrek film series. The film stars Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz, who reprise their respective voice roles of Shrek, Donkey, and Princess Fiona. They are joined by new characters voiced by Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Rupert Everett, and Jennifer Saunders. Shrek 2 takes place following the events of the first film, with Shrek and Donkey meeting Fiona's parents as the zealous Fairy Godmother, who wants Fiona to marry her son Prince Charming, plots to destroy Shrek and Fiona's marriage. Shrek and Donkey team up with a sword-wielding cat named Puss in Boots to foil her plans.
This article is about the film. For the video game based on the film, see Shrek 2 (video game).Shrek 2
- Andrew Adamson
- Joe Stillman
- J. David Stem
- David N. Weiss
Andrew Adamson
- Aron Warner
- David Lipman
- John H. Williams
- Michael Andrews
- Sim Evan-Jones
- May 15, 2004 (Cannes)
- May 19, 2004 (United States)
92 minutes[2]
United States[1]
English
$150 million[3]
$935.9 million[4]
Development began in 2001, and following disagreements with producers, the first film's screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were replaced with Adamson. The story was inspired by Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), and new animation tools were utilized to improve the visual appearance of each character, particularly Puss in Boots. The lead actors also received a significant bump in salary to $10 million, which at the time was among the highest contracts in their respective careers. Like its predecessor, Shrek 2 also parodies other films based on fairy tales and features references to American popular culture.[5][6][7] The film is dedicated to the memory of Shrek creator William Steig, who died on October 3, 2003, eight months before the film was released.
Shrek 2 premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival on May 15, 2004, where it competed for the Palme d'Or, and was released in theaters on May 19, by DreamWorks Pictures. Met with highly favorable reviews like its predecessor, the film grossed $935 million worldwide. It scored the second-largest three-day opening weekend in United States history and the largest opening for an animated film at the time of its release.[8][9] It went on to become the highest-grossing film of 2004[10] and the fifth-highest-grossing film overall at the time of its release. Shrek 2 is also DreamWorks Animation's highest-grossing film to date and the highest-grossing film released by DreamWorks Pictures, and it held the title of being the highest-grossing animated film of all time worldwide until Pixar Animation Studios' Toy Story 3 surpassed it in 2010.[11] The film received two Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song, and its associated soundtrack charted in the Top 10 on the US Billboard 200. Two sequels—Shrek the Third (2007) and Shrek Forever After (2010)—had soon followed. The film's character Puss in Boots has also received his own series of spin-off media—Puss in Boots (2011), The Adventures of Puss in Boots (2015–2018) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)—following his debut.
Plot
Newlyweds Shrek and Princess Fiona return from their honeymoon to find they have been invited by Fiona's parents to a royal ball to celebrate their marriage. Fiona convinces a reluctant Shrek that they should accept, and they travel to the kingdom of Far Far Away with Donkey in tow. They meet Fiona's parents, King Harold and Queen Lillian, who are shocked to see the ogres, with Harold particularly repulsed. At dinner, Shrek and Harold get into a heated argument, and Fiona, disgusted at their behavior, locks herself away in her room. Shrek worries that he is losing Fiona, particularly after finding her childhood diary and reading that she was once infatuated with Prince Charming.
Harold is secretly reprimanded by the Fairy Godmother, who had arranged with Harold for her son Prince Charming to marry Fiona. She orders Harold to get rid of Shrek or else lose his own happy ending, so Harold arranges for Puss in Boots to assassinate the ogre.
Unable to defeat Shrek, Puss reveals that he was paid by Harold and offers to be an ally. Shrek, Donkey, and Puss sneak into the Fairy Godmother's factory and steal a "Happily Ever After" potion that Shrek thinks will make him good enough for Fiona. He and Donkey drink the potion, lament that nothing seems to be happening, and then suddenly fall asleep. Back in Far Far Away, Fiona prepares to find Shrek so they can return home, but she too falls asleep.
The next morning, Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona awaken to find that the two ogres are now humans, and Donkey is a white stallion. In order to make the change permanent, Shrek must kiss Fiona by midnight. Shrek, Donkey, and Puss return to the castle; however, the Fairy Godmother, having discovered the theft, has sent Charming to pose as human Shrek and win Fiona's love. At the Fairy Godmother's urging, Shrek leaves the castle, believing that the best way to make Fiona happy is to let her go.
Fiona is skeptical of Prince Charming; therefore, to ensure the two will wed, the Fairy Godmother gives Harold a love potion to put into Fiona's tea. This exchange is overheard by Shrek, Donkey, and Puss, who are arrested by the royal knights after Donkey inadvertently exposes them. While a royal ball begins, the fairy tale creatures whom Shrek and Donkey had met during their previous adventure arrive at the dungeon and rescue the trio. They all storm the castle with the help of a monstrous living gingerbread man created by the Muffin Man.
Shrek fails to prevent Charming from kissing Fiona, but instead of falling in love, Fiona headbutts him. Harold reveals that he swapped Fiona's tainted teacup with his own, unable to go through with the plot. Enraged, the Fairy Godmother tries to strike Shrek with a spell from her magic wand. Harold jumps in front of it, reverting into the Frog Prince; some of the spell ricochets off his armor, knocking the Fairy Godmother backwards. Appearing unharmed at first, the Fairy Godmother furiously aims her wand at Shrek again, but before she can deliver the final blow, the spell causes her to explode and evaporate into bubbles.
With the Fairy Godmother gone, Harold apologizes, admitting to using the "Happily Ever After" potion years earlier to gain Lillian's love. He approves Shrek and Fiona's marriage, while Lillian assures Harold that she still loves him. As the clock strikes midnight, Fiona declines Shrek's offer to remain human, and they revert into ogres, while Donkey also returns to normal. In a mid-credits scene, Dragon, who had previously married Donkey, reveals that they now have several dragon-donkey hybrid babies.
Production
In 2001, soon after the original Shrek proved to be a hit, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz negotiated an upfront payment of $10 million each for voicing a sequel to the film.[12][13][14][15] This pay increase represented a significant rise from the $350,000 salary that each of the three were paid for the first film.[14] According to Jeffrey Katzenberg, the executive producer of Shrek 2 and a co-founder of DreamWorks Pictures, who led the negotiations, the payments were probably the highest in the actors' entire careers.[12] Each of the actors were expected to work between 15 and 18 hours in total.[12] The film was produced with a $70 million budget.[16][17]
Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the screenwriters of the first Shrek film, insisted that the sequel be a traditional fairytale, but after disagreements with the producers, they left the project and were replaced by director Andrew Adamson. His writing of Shrek 2 was inspired by the 1967 comedy-drama film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and was completed with the help of the film's co-writers Joe Stillman (one of the other writers from the first film), J. David Stem and David N. Weiss, and co-directors, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon, whom the latter two spent most of the film's production duration in Northern California while Adamson spent most of his time with the film's voice actors in Glendale, California.[18]
DreamWorks began production of Shrek 2 in 2001,[19] before the first Shrek film was completed.[18] The studio added more human characters to the film than there were in its predecessor and improved character appearance and movement with the use of several new animation/rendering systems.[20] In particular, Puss in Boots necessitated development of a whole new set of film production tools to handle the appearance of his fur, belt, and hat plume; Puss' fur especially required an upgrade to the fur shader.[21] All of the character setup was completed in the first three years of production.[18]
In an early version of Shrek 2, Shrek abdicated the throne, and called for a fairy tale election. Pinocchio's campaign was an "honesty" campaign, while Gingy's was a "smear" campaign. Adamson said that although this plot did have many funny ideas, it was also too overtly satiric and political, and considered "more intellectual than emotional".[22] Shrek 2 also appears much darker in terms of lighting when compared to the original film. Designers reportedly took inspiration from 19th century French illustrator and engraver Gustav Doré to improve the film's richness of detail and setting. According to production designer Guillaume Aretos, "There are a lot of medieval paintings and illustrations [and] my own influences, which are classical paintings from the 15th and 16th centuries...The design of Shrek is always a twist on reality anyway, so we tried to [pack] as much detail and interest as we could in the imagery."[23]
Reception
Box office
The film opened at No. 1 with a Friday-to-Sunday total of $108 million, and $129 million since its Wednesday launch, from a then-record 4,163 theaters, for an average of $25,952 per theater over the weekend. At the time Shrek 2's Friday-to-Sunday total was the second-highest opening weekend, only trailing Spider-Man's $114.8 million. In addition, Saturday alone managed to obtain $44.8 million, making it the highest single-day gross at the time, beating Spider-Man's first Saturday gross of $43.6 million.[8] The film remained at No. 1 in its second weekend, expanding to 4,223 theaters, and grossing another $95.6 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend, narrowly beating out the $85.8 million four-day tally of new opener The Day After Tomorrow. It spent ten weeks in the weekly Top 10, remaining there until July 29, and stayed in theaters for 149 days (roughly twenty-one weeks), closing on November 25, 2004. The film was released in the United Kingdom on July 2, 2004, and topped the country's box office for the next two weekends, before being dethroned by Spider-Man 2.[42]
The film grossed $441.2 million domestically (US and Canada) and $487.5 million in foreign markets for a total of $935.3 million worldwide,[3] making it the highest-grossing film of both 2004[43] and in its franchise.[44] This also puts the film at 14th on the all-time domestic box office list[45] and 42nd on the worldwide box office list.[46] The film sold an estimated 71,050,900 tickets in the US.[47]
The film also took away the highest worldwide gross made by an animated feature, which was before held by Finding Nemo (2003),[48] although the latter still had a higher overseas-only gross.[49] With DVD sales and Shrek 2 merchandise estimated to total almost $800 million, the film (which was produced with a budget of $150 million)[3] is DreamWorks' most profitable film to date.
Shrek 2 remained the highest-grossing animated film worldwide until the release of Toy Story 3 (2010),[11] and held the record for the highest-grossing animated film at the North American box office until the release of Finding Dory (2016)[50][51] as well as the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film at this box office until the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023. It also remained the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film worldwide until it was surpassed by Despicable Me 2 in 2013.
Critical response
Shrek 2 has an approval rating of 89% based on 239 professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 7.7/10. Its critical consensus reads, "It may not be as fresh as the original, but topical humor and colorful secondary characters make Shrek 2 a winner in its own right."[52] Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Shrek 2 a score of 75 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[53] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[54]
Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, saying it is "bright, lively, and entertaining",[55] and Robert Denerstein of Denver Rocky Mountain News called it "sharply funny".[56] James Kendrick of QNetwork praised the plot, calling it "familiar, but funny".[57] J. R. Jones of the Chicago Reader called it "unassailable family entertainment", and similar to the first film.[58] Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post called it "better and funnier than the original".[59]
Though he wrote that it is not as good as the first film, Kevin Lally of Film Journal International described it as "inventive and often very funny".[60] Peter Rainer of New York magazine, however, stated the film "manages to undo much of what made its predecessor such a computer-generated joy ride."[61]
Sean Naughton of Complex described it as "one of the best-animated sequels ever".[62]
Accolades
Shrek 2 was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.[63] It won five awards at the 31st People's Choice Awards: Favorite Animated Movie, Favorite Animated Movie Star for "Donkey" (Eddie Murphy), Favorite Movie Comedy, and Favorite Movie Villain for "Fairy Godmother" (Jennifer Saunders), and Favorite Sequel.[64] It also won a Teen Choice Award in the category of Choice Award Choice Movie – Comedy.[65] The film was nominated at the 3rd Visual Effects Society Awards in the category of "Outstanding Performance by an Animated Character in an Animated Motion Picture."[66]
Along with Shark Tale, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but lost to The Incredibles.[67] One of the film's songs, "Accidentally in Love" received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Song,[67] Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song,[68] and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.[69]
In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated the film for its Top 10 Animation Films list.[70]