Someone at The Guardian has gone against the grain and decided to publish the unpopular take that Shrek is awful to celebrate its 20th anniversary. Understandably, this didn’t sit well with the countless amounts of fans that the movie has gathered over time.
If you mess with the legion of Shrek supporters (everyone who breathes), then you’re gonna get Shrek’d in the comments section.
This is a universal truth. In fact, it was a dot point in my training. I actually signed upon the dotted line swearing I would never talk shit about Shrek, to which I responded “why the fuck would I do that?”
Truthfully, none of this happened, but you get my point.
Over 4,000 angry reacts, 6,000 comments and 926 shares later, and it is safe to say that Guardian writer Scott Tobias has riled up their audience with his negative take. I mean, just look at the results of this chaos:
It’s the age-old practice of ‘write unpopular take, get clicks’, but the article actually goes into depth, which is the insulting part to fans like myself who grew up with the iconic film.
“Shrek is a terrible movie. It’s not funny. It looks awful,” wrote Tobias, with enough vigor to wipe the green off anyone’s face.
“It would influence many unfunny, awful-looking computer-animated comedies that copied its formula of glib self-reference and sickly sweet sentimentality. Three of those terrible movies were sequels to Shrek.”
The article then goes on to describe how the formula of Shrek is unoriginal and how the movie was dated from the moment it came out, pushing toilet jokes that just didn’t age well.
It would be pointless to counter any of these ideas, because as we all know, the movie fkn slaps. The exploding bird song (you know the one), the gingerbread man scene, “give him the chair!”, almost everything with Farquaad, the fact that Fiona kinda looks like Cameron Diaz, I could go on.
It’s just so perfect, and is one of the key films that kicked off meme culture as we know it.
It’s so necessary to the modern-day lexicon that to trash it, you really have to squint hard. The after-effects of the film (which are critiqued the most by The Guardian) are not the fault of the film at all. We cannot blame the poorly made errors of other film companies just because they were inspired by Shrek. I mean, they were just trying their best, but ultimately failed.
I could truly write an essay on the importance and perfection of Shrek, but the thing is, we all know why the movie is enjoyable and popular. So instead let’s look at some comments written by disgruntled fans in the Guardian’s Facebook comments, because they’re gold.
“Toilet humour will always be funny. The plot will always be valid since it is about looks not being important,” wrote one Facebook user.
“What the hell was offensive about Shrek?! It’s one of the best animated films of all time and all the greatest animated movies are considered great because they are written for all ages, and all ages find them funny and entertaining,” wrote another angry user.
And finally, my favourite:
“Someone didn’t get a gingerbread man with their coffee this morning! Should have reviewed The Grinch instead.”
Fkn gold.
Scott, I’m sorry that this happened to you, but hey, you asked for it. Get Shrek’d I guess?
