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Only one critical favorite, DreamWorks' irreverent family film Shrek, is making a significant summer splash ($176 million at the box office so far.) The film's success can be explained in many ways: It entertains children with high adventure and the kind of crass humor that Hollywood has decided is appropriate for kids. It entertains adults with sophisticated pop culture references and a subtext about the bad politics between Disney and DreamWorks. And there's no denying its animation is astonishing.

A couple of weeks ago here at Film Forum, a gallery of responses to the film were on display. Many critics were dismayed by the lowbrow antics, but found its story a refreshing change from the predictable Disney formulas. Currently at Books and Culture, Eric Metaxas of Big Idea Productions offers a very different view. Metaxas writes for the popular children's video series VeggieTales, some of the funniest and most intelligent entertainment for children and adults you'll find anywhere. He writes, "Shrek doesn't just subvert the treacly Disney version of fairy tales, it subverts the glorious and mysterious and ennobling idea of fairytales themselves." He goes on to list its various offenses. "Shrek is tiresome in its unalleviated puncturing. No sooner does a moment fill with meaning and beauty than you can sense the hatpins poised to prick it." He adds, "Much of this is disturbingly inappropriate for children."

Spoiler warning! (Do not proceed if you do not wish to know the ending of the story.)

Metaxas takes particular offense to how Shrek ends. The beautiful Princess Fiona is an ogress who is under a spell that makes her look like a typically Disney-ified beauty during the daylight hours. She has been told that the spell will be broken and she will take "love's true form" if she encounters true love. When she does encounter true love, you might expect her to become beautiful forever. The big surprise is that she returns to her natural state … a green-skinned ogre. This turns the traditional Disney-like ending on its head, avoiding a conclusion in which hero and heroine end up looking like Barbie and Ken and, thus, being (at last) beautiful. And Shrek delivers the movie's most important sentiment … that she is beautiful just the way she is.

But this offends Metaxas. "Evidently the hoary fairy tale conceit that one's inner beauty will be revealed on the outside is for people wearing pince-nez, celluloid collars, and spats. Must not only Shrek main ugly, but Fiona become forever so?"

His conclusions, when I passed them along to the OnFilm eGroup, set off a wave of commentary. "Wasn't the lesson of the Ugly Duckling that the duckling had always been beautiful, but simply hadn't seen himself in the right light?" asks Peter T. Chattaway. "Why can't that be the lesson that Fiona learns about herself, too? What if, in fact, she is not really an uglified human, but a beautiful ogre?" Many others took issue with Metaxas's claim, and I have to count myself among them. Metaxas's argument implies that he would prefer the ogress remained altered, remain the typical thin-waisted, sexy Barbie doll, rather than reverting to her true unenhanced self. Fiona under the spell looks just like what our media and society have decided is boiler-plate beauty. Not many young ladies are able to accomplish such an appearance without gross abuses to their bodies.

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June (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45