While most people who saw this movie as a kid, like myself, have very fond memories of enjoying this it, it's been somewhat overlooked in the years since it came out. It certainly hasn't been forgotten or anything. But what has unfortunately been forgotten is it's quality aside from being a fun animated kid's movie. Particularly in terms of world building and expanding on themes of the first.
The three biggest reasons for this, in my opinion are as follows:
1) The passage of time. This movie came out in 2004, almost 15 years ago. That's a long time. With the target audience being children in the early 2000s, many of them may have simply moved on to other genres or forgotten about the movie altogether. Now you could argue that this isn't a valid point, considering this was the same year The Incredibles was released. After all, that movie was also kid-friendly and it's as popular as it's ever been. To that I say that while both movies are geared towards children, The Incredibles target audience is composed of a much wider demographic that includes adults. This isn't to say that adults can't enjoy Shrek 2 as well. On the contrary, re-watching it as an adult has given me a newfound appreciation for it's themes that I couldn't have as a child. But with the Incredibles, you have a main character struggling to be a parent and husband while attempting to recapture the glory of his youth. This is something much more directly relatable to middle-aged adults than a movie centered around fairy tale characters.
2) The memes. This might be self-explanatory, but when something is memed into oblivion, it's not uncommon for people to start remembering said thing for the memes rather than for what the thing was to begin with. Case in point, when people who grew up with Shrek start seeing memes of the movies nonstop, There is a risk of the franchise being disregarded as simply a meme source. That's not to say the memes aren't funny. I quite enjoy them myself. But I don't want to forget the quality of Shrek 1 and 2 in the midst of them.
3) The release of Shrek 3 and 4. Shrek 3 is, to be frank, quite awful. I saw it on DVD a few months after it's release, and I remember being excited for it, after enjoying the first 2 so much. Oddly enough, I do remember barely enjoying it, but only because I felt like I had to. "It's a Shrek movie! What could go wrong?" But then, as an adult, I found myself thinking back on the series I liked so much as a child, and I completely forgot literally everything about Shrek 3. Re-watching it, I understand why. None of the themes from the first 2 carry over to the 3rd. It also doesn't help that the jokes really aren't all that funny, or that none of the characters change throughout the film, or that the new characters don't even matter to the story. The worst crime of them all is that everything stays the same until the end of the movie. Yes Shrek is now a father, but that progression isn't earned, but forced. Now the 4th movie, I actually enjoy much more than most people. But it took me 5-6 years to actually give it a shot. This is because of how truly weak the 3rd movie is. It turned off a lot of people, including myself, to showing up for the next movie. Unlike The Incredibles, Shrek 2 was followed shortly by the release of sequels. The lower quality of said sequels tainted the public's ability to remember Shrek 2 for the exceptional movie that it is.
If you watch Shrek 1 and 2 and ignore the 3rd movie, you experience a story about the meaning of true love and accepting yourself for who you are. And if it wasn't enough that these themes are executed exceptionally well, you are given great humor at a consistent rate, as well a some incredibly memorable soundtracks. Seriously the Fair Godmother's cover of Bonnie Tyler's "I Need a Hero" remains one of my favorite cover songs to this day.
To conclude, I'd highly recommend giving Shrek 2 another go. I think you'll be surprised how well it holds up.
Submitted September 17, 2018 at 06:55AM by KyloReyBiwan https://ift.tt/2xindoz
