Aisha Harris

And that's supposed to be both subversive, but also it's kind of sweet.

And I don't think it hits those tonal beats quite in the way that they're meant to be.

It just all feels very...

Like cheap in a way.

And I wish that the humor had been like if it hadn't spent so much time trying to rail against the thing that is also indulging in, I think it would have felt a little bit more genuine.

There have been comparisons made to this kind of humor existing in animation before.

There was a retrospective in The Times that interviewed a few of the people involved with making of the film for the 20th anniversary.

And one of the people involved mentioned that, you know, it was part of this lineage of like the Looney Tunes and all of those sorts of animated versions that are sort of the antithesis of Disney and that whole like very squeaky clean image.

But the difference is that like Looney Tunes, clearly they have their own thing and they're not always trying to be subversive to like something new.

in comparison to something else.

It's just, that's what they are.

And I think, to me, that's part of what makes Shrek so not as interesting.

Right.

Especially the let's cast celebrities as the voices of these animated characters.

Now, obviously...

this had been happening in animation for a few years.

Robin Williams being in, in Aladdin being a big example.

You later had Danny DeVito and something like Hercules.

It was happening, but it was very clear that this movie sort of kicked off seeing that in filmmaking and in animation on an even greater scale.

And then you have people like Jerry Seinfeld doing Bee Moody.