Aisha Harris

And it all started with the story of a crabby green ogre who just wants a bunch of fairy tale characters to stay out of his swamp.

I'm Aisha Harris.

Well, picture this.

It's 2001.

Little Aisha is 13 years old, and...

The three things she's most obsessed with in 2001 are Save the Last Dance, Moulin Rouge, and Shrek.

And I watched it so many times, I could quote it back and forth.

I knew all the songs.

To this day, I can probably still recite the Welcome to Duloc song, the song that's sort of a ripoff of It's a Small World.

The Merry Men song.

As much as I loved Disney and did love Disney at that time, I was also 13 and was going through that sort of rebellious phase and starting to enjoy more edgy, quote unquote, edgy humor.

And so this movie was like perfect for that because it was sending up all of these familiar tropes that I already knew about.

with the sort of elbowing and the winky wink nod about Snow White, but she lives with seven little men, but she's not easy.

Like those sorts of jokes, totally my jam.

Now I look at it and I just feel as though it doesn't fully work for me.

And I'm really surprised to go back and read all of the reviews because I've always thought of it as the type of movie that

If you were 13, you would love this.

If you were an adult, you wouldn't.

But when you look at the reviews, this movie was beloved by pretty much everyone.

Like Roger Ebert gave this a four star review and he called it jolly and wicked, filled with sly in jokes and yet somehow possessing a heart.