Taglines: Once upon another time…
The natural order of fairy tales is interrupted in the sequel to the Academy Award-winning blockbuster Shrek. Shrek 2 sends Shrek, Donkey and Princess Fiona on a whirlwind of new adventures with more fairy-tale favorites to lampoon along the way.
After battling a fire-breathing dragon and the evil Lord Farquaad to win the hand of Princess Fiona, Shrek now faces his greatest challenge: the in-laws. Shrek and Princess Fiona return from their honeymoon to an invitation to visit Fiona’s parents, the king and queen of the Kingdom of Far Far Away.
With Donkey along for the ride, the newlyweds set off. All of the citizens of Far Far Away turn out to greet their returning Princess, and her parents joyfully anticipate the homecoming of their daughter and her new Prince. But no one could have prepared them for the sight of their new son-in-law, not to mention how much their little girl hadwellchanged.
Little did Shrek and Fiona know that their marriage had foiled all of her father’s plans for her futureand his own. Now the king must enlist the help of a powerful Fairy Godmother, the handsome Prince Charming and that famed ogre killer Puss In Boots to put right his version of “happily ever after.”
Shrek 2 is a 2004 American computer-animated fantasy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon. It is the sequel to 2001’s Shrek, with Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz reprising their respective voice roles of Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona from the first film, joined by Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Rupert Everett, and Jennifer Saunders.
The film grossed $441,226,247 domestically (US and Canada) and $478,612,511 in foreign markets for a total of $919,838,758 worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of both 2004 and in its franchise. This also puts the film at 14th on the all-time domestic box office list and 42nd on the worldwide box office list. The film sold an estimated 71,050,900 tickets in the US.
After Happily Ever After
The computer-animated comedy “Shrek” opened in 2001 to worldwide box office success and critical acclaim, culminating in an Academy Award, the first ever presented in the new category of Best Animated Feature. On the heels of that success, plans for “Shrek 2” were put into the works, but far from being a given, the sequel was contingent on a number of crucial factors, the first being the story.
Producer Aron Warner offers, “We wanted to do something very different from `Shrek,’ by widening the scope. During the process, we were continually asking ourselves, `Is this funny? Is it as heartfelt? Does it have as much to say as the first movie did?’”
Writer / director Andrew Adamson notes, “When Jeffrey Katzenberg first came to me about doing a sequel, I realized we had painted ourselves into a corner as far as your typical fairy tale goes: We’d let Shrek and Fiona get married, presumably to live happily ever after. But that ended up creating a whole new story angle for us. I started thinking about what happens after marriage, the idea being that you don’t just marry your spouse, you marry their whole family.”
Meeting the parents was probably the last thing on Shrek’s mind when he literally swept Princess Fiona off her feet and married her. But royal trumpets signal the end of the newlyweds’ honeymoon when Shrek’s new in-laws-the king and queen of Far Far Away-send a formal invitation for Princess Fiona to come home for a royal ball to celebrate her wedding to her “Prince Charming.”
Therein lay another important aspect of the story: meeting expectations…or rather not meeting them. Adamson says, “We all know that Fiona had expected to meet Prince Charming and live happily ever after. Well, her parents were expecting the same thing, so her showing up with an ogre, as an ogre, is a pretty big shock.”
Director Kelly Asbury remarks, “`Shrek 2′ explores what happens when the natural balance of fairy tales is disrupted. Fiona’s parents locked her in a tower expecting a handsome prince to rescue her and break the curse that turned her into an ogre when the sun went down. They expected everything to go as planned, the way it usually happens in fairy tales. They hadn’t counted on an ogre named Shrek coming along and breaking the curse in the reverse. Now their daughter is an ogress night and day because, as he’s known to do in our fairy-tale world, Shrek skewed the direction of things a bit.”
“Shrek” derived a lot of laughter from lampooning some of our most beloved fairy tales and the sequel is no more sparing, taking aim at fairy-tale conventions, as well as some familiar movie moments. Director Conrad Vernon says that the filmmakers had fun finding more fairy tales to spoof. “We really dug into the books to pull from different fairy tales. There were a lot we hadn’t used, but the problem was that some of them are so obscure, no one has ever heard of them. So we basically stayed with familiar fairy tales, and found new ways to turn them on their ear.”
Shrek 2 (2004)
Directed by: Andrew Adamson, Conrad Vernon, Kelly Asbury
Starring: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Jennifer Saunders, John Cleese, Julie Andrews, Kelly Asbury, Cody Cameron, Conrad Vernon, David P. Smith
Screenplay by: Joe Stillman
Production Design by: Guillaume Aretos
Film Editing by: Mike Andrews, Sim Evan-Jones
Costume Design by: Isis Mussenden
Art Direction by: Steve Pilcher
Music by: Harry Gregson-Williams
MPAA Rating: PG for some crude humor, a brief substance reference and some suggestive content.
Distributed by: DreamWorks Pictures
Release Date: May 19, 2004
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