OKAY, I HAVE TO admit I was wrong. A few months ago I harped on "Love Actually", and the movies in general, that marriage was almost always shown in an unattractive light. The stereotype says that courting is fun and marriage is tedious. We rarely get to see healthy, loving married relationships on the big screen.
"Shrek 2" defies movie conventions and shows two people wholly in love with each other -- literally warts and all. Neither is trying to control or dominate the relationship; they want only to help each other grow as human be... well, ogres ... and for the other to have the very best. The tension is not so much in the relationship -- neither person is tempted away from the other -- but the conspiring of the outside world. They have their disagreements, but on the whole it's the pair of them versus everyone else. They are a team.
To tell the truth, I didn't much like the first "Shrek", as I found the courtship of Princess Fiona and Shrek to be unnerving. The sniping, bitterness and rancor in their relationship did not seem to be adequately dealt with once they realized they were in love. The happy ending felt false to me. I had no intention of seeing the sequel except that I was intrigued by the first five minutes that Yahoo let people download for free. How often do you see man and wife farting freely with each other? How often do you see two overweight people playfully launch into some rough-and-tumble? Not to give you too graphic a picture into my life, but that's part of marriage as I experience it.
"Shrek 2" is also elevated by an inspired performance by Antonio Banderas as Puss-in-Boots. But maybe this is just because I have a cat, and the scenes where the big, bad ogre-killing swordsman is distracted by licking his own tummy -- that's priceless. So, more or less "Shrek 2" is just an animated version of life around my house. In a movie with giant gingerbread men, fairy godmothers, and talking donkeys, you wouldn't expect much cinema verité, but somehow "Shrek 2" captures very real, very rare moments that are in short supply at the movies.
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