Speaking Volumes

If you've read some of my other blog posts, you already know that my husband and I have a hard time agreeing on a movie. I tend to lean towards romantic comedies, psychological thrillers and foreign films with or without subtitles. He gravitates to shoot-em' up flicks and any movie that features Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal, or Jean-Claude Van Damm. A typical Saturday night at the movies in our house starts with me asking “so what do you wanna watch?”. Response, “so what do you have?” I begin going through the pile until I hear the “ok, let's try that one.” Last Saturday we started with Dead Girl, which had potential, as it's cast included Val Kilmer, acceptable to him, and Amanda Plummer, a good pick for me. The plot summary sounded fairly decent.. Words like psychological drama,, murder, morbidly dark, drew me in but less than 15 minutes of the film and I knew this one was out the window. The only thing we could agree on was that Piper Laurie, playing the dead girl's mother, was well cast. Next up I suggested Slipstream starring Anthony Hopkins. How bad could that be? It was billed as a “dream-within a dream, movie within a movie”, film. Again, not even ten minutes down the road and he said “if this isn't going somewhere in 5 minutes, can it”. Last week I had talked about Vampyr on the blog and would truly like to watch it. It's supposed to be a classic in horror vampire films. He thought that sounded good too. So I pop it in the dvd player and, lo and behold it's subtitled. Pop it out!

Sigh, sigh...one last chance, Shrek the Third. We had seen Shrek and Shrek 2 and both enjoyed these humorous stories about this gentle ogre. In the first of these fractured fairy-tales, Shrek must save his peaceful swamp from the scheming Lord Farquaad. He sets off with the obnoxious, but soon lovable, Donkey to try to persuade Farquaad to give him his swamp back. Farquaad, who envisions himself as the king, sends Shrek on a mission to rescue the lovely Princess Fiona. You're quickly drawn into the story and the characters can't be beat.

Finally, a movie we both could watch and enjoy. We settled down to see what new situations the homely, but somehow cute, ogre could get himself into this time. In this outing King Harold (voice of John Cleese), Shrek's father-in-law is dying and a new king must be crowned. The frog king precedes to do a death scene that somehow is hysterical and in the end you wish this frog would just croak. King Harold thinks Shrek should be the next King, but Shrek only wants to continue his existence in his peaceful swamp. And so the adventure to name a new king begins. There are a whole cast of characters of our favorite fairly tale friends, Rapunzel, Cinderella and her ugly stepsisters, Snow White, The Big Bad Wolf and Three Pigs, Pinocchio, The Gingerbread Boy, The Evil Queen, Merlin, Captain Hook and Lancelot. Prince Charming, feels he's the rightful heir to the throne but Fiona's rebellious cousin, Artie (Justin Timberlake) is the one true heir. Shrek must find Artie and bring him back to claim the throne so he sets out with his trusted friends Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas). Lots of adventures along the way and a few surprises I won't reveal.

The appeal of all the Shreks is definitely credited to the fine animation, twist on old fairy tale favorites and the wonderful voices of the characters. Shrek is nailed superbly by the talented Mike Myers. Eddie Murphy has never been funnier than he is as Donkey, and Antonio Banderas is a most romantic Puss. Fiona is sweetly voiced by Cameron Diaz and the Queen is given a fiercely independent womanly tone by none other than Julie Andrews. Mostly though, it's Shrek himself, green, big bumbling ogre, kind of an everyman, just wanting to live a peaceful life with his family on his own piece of swamp, who