Shrek with Jen Cownie

Summary

Sentimental Garbage: Episode Summary – "Shrek with Jen Cownie"

Release Date: June 26, 2025

In this engaging episode of Sentimental Garbage, host Caroline O'Donoghue teams up with special guest Jen Cownie to delve deep into the beloved animated film Shrek. The conversation traverses the film's cultural impact, its innovative blend of fairy tale elements with CGI animation, and the intricate character dynamics that have endeared it to audiences worldwide.

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1. The Cultural Significance of Shrek

Caroline and Jen begin by celebrating Shrek as a cinematic milestone that reshaped both the fantasy and animated genres. They highlight how the film stood alongside contemporaries like Lord of the Rings, noting its revolutionary use of CGI and its departure from traditional fairy tales.

Jen (02:10): "Shrek changed animated fairy tale storytelling forever, introducing a new look and feel with CGI that was both subversive and satirical."

Caroline (03:13): "Shrek and Lord of the Rings emerged around the same time, each transforming cinema in their unique ways."

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2. Breaking Down Fairy Tale Conventions

The discussion emphasizes how Shrek reinvigorated the fairy tale genre by infusing it with humor, gross-out humor, and a more authentic representation of characters. Unlike the sanitized and moralistic tales dominated by Disney, Shrek embraced the original fairy tales' grit and imperfections.

Caroline (07:03): "Shrek reclaimed the soul of fairy tales, reminding us that these stories shouldn't shy away from being gross or dirty."

Jen (07:40): "Fairy tales are meant to be bawdy and freaky, and Shrek brought that back with joyously crude humor."

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3. Character Analysis: Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona

The hosts delve into the complexities of the main characters, exploring Shrek's journey from isolation to acceptance, Donkey's embodiment of genuine friendship, and Fiona's struggle with identity.

• Shrek: Portrayed as an ogre who believes everyone hates him, his character arc revolves around finding a place in the world and overcoming negative self-talk.

  Caroline (25:15): "Shrek's tale is about finding a place in the world and overcoming his own negative self-talk."

• Donkey: Celebrated as the quintessential supportive friend, Donkey's unwavering loyalty and infectious positivity are highlighted as models for healthy masculine friendships.

  Caroline (25:58): "Donkey is the friend I wish so many men had—someone who loves unconditionally and is always there for you."

• Princess Fiona: Analyzed as a character who challenges traditional fairy tale princess tropes, Fiona's dual identity and desire for authentic love are key discussion points.

  Jen (47:02): "Princess Fiona is a single woman who has let culture dictate her expectations, leading to her complex relationship with Shrek."

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4. Thematic Exploration: Love, Identity, and Acceptance

Caroline and Jen explore Shrek's deep themes, particularly focusing on authentic love that transcends superficial appearances. They draw parallels between Shrek and films like Before Midnight, emphasizing the importance of embracing one's "yuckiness" as a form of vulnerability and genuine connection.

Jen (55:14): "The true valor of romantic love in Shrek is about being yucky in front of someone and finding someone equally authentic."

Caroline (56:43): "Yuckiness is vulnerability, and Shrek teaches us to embrace our true selves in relationships."

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5. Shrek's Animation and Humor

A significant portion of the conversation is dedicated to the film's animation style and its effective use of CGI to incorporate visual humor and Easter eggs. The hosts praise the meticulousness of the animation, which allows for intricate jokes and references that resonate with both children and adults.

Jen (34:54): "Shrek's animation is choiceful and detailed, allowing for layered humor that CGI uniquely facilitates."

Caroline (37:48): "Every scene in Shrek is crafted with intention, making even the smallest jokes land perfectly."

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6. Legacy and Influence on Modern Animation

The hosts critique the trajectory of CGI films post-Shrek, lamenting the decline in thoughtful storytelling and the rise of formulaic, star-studded animations. They argue that Shrek's success was rooted not just in its characters but in its sharp script and meaningful messages about self-acceptance and love.

Jen (43:28): "Shrek's legacy opened the industry to a wave of CGI films, many of which missed the mark by prioritizing star power over substance."

Caroline (44:37): "While Shrek spurred a craze for CGI animations, it also led to a proliferation of less thoughtful movies that fail to capture its magic."

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7. Personal Reflections and Emotional Impact

Caroline and Jen share their personal experiences and emotional responses to the Shrek series, illustrating how the films have maintained their impact over the years. They express admiration for the authentic relationships depicted in the sequels, particularly highlighting Shrek 2 as a continuation of the heartfelt narrative.

Jen (57:42): "Watching Shrek 2 last night made us tearful because it beautifully portrays a happily married couple navigating their relationship."

Caroline (58:55): "Shrek and Fiona's love story is genuine and inspiring, showing the importance of accepting each other's flaws."

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8. Concluding Thoughts

The episode wraps up with the hosts affirming Shrek's enduring charm and its role as a beacon for authentic storytelling in animation. They encourage listeners to appreciate the film's layered humor, heartfelt messages, and its successful blend of traditional and modern elements.

Caroline (64:21): "Shrek is a story about two good pals and a healthy relationship, making it a timeless favorite."

Jen (65:38): "Despite its animated nature, Shrek offers profound lessons on love, acceptance, and friendship that resonate across generations."

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Conclusion

This episode of Sentimental Garbage offers a comprehensive and heartfelt exploration of Shrek, celebrating its contributions to modern cinema and its lasting influence on both fans and the animation industry. Caroline and Jen's insightful analysis underscores the film's unique ability to blend humor, emotion, and meaningful themes, solidifying its place as a cultural touchstone.

Transcript

[Caroline]

BetterHelp online therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.

[Jen]

Hi, everyone. Magical Garbage is a podcast miniseries about fantasy storytelling and the enchanted things that helped make us who we are. I'm doing this miniseries in celebration of my new novel, Skip Shock, which is out on June 5, and it's a story about love and time travel and parallel worlds and the moment in your life when you realize that you can't really be on the fence about things anymore, that you've got to love with your whole heart and fight with your whole heart and on one occasion, violate the rules of a nude bathhouse with your whole heart. Okay, on with the show. Hello and welcome to Magical Garbage, the podcast where we hooved and we pooped and we signed an eviction notice. My name is Caroline and I'm here till Thursday. Try the veal. And it's five shillings for the possessed toy. It's Jen County. Wee. It's Shrek and everybody loves Shrek.

[Caroline]

Everybody loves Shrek and such a rich tapestry to choose your intro from every single line of this film. Eminently quotable.

[Jen]

Much like Parfait.

[Caroline]

Much like Parfait.

[Jen]

Everyone loves Shrek's. It's the most delicious movie in the whole world.

[Caroline]

It's the most delicious movie in the whole world. Even though no knows what Parfait is.

[Jen]

Yeah. That is the one thing that it hasn't like. Like so many careers have lived and died because of Shrek. For example, the guys who did the opening song, I imagine, are still touring that song.

[Caroline]

I mean, obviously still forever.

[Jen]

You know, in a hundred years when everyone's forgotten who the Counting Crows are, they'll remember Accidentally in Love from the opening. I sure do.

[Caroline]

I already don't know what the song.

[Jen]

No one will ever learn. No one will ever learn what Parfait is.

[Caroline]

It's a layered dessert, Caroline. We googled it last night, and this morning I made myself one for breakfast. Sort of.

[Jen]

It's not even the first time I've had a Google parfait. It just goes on.

[Caroline]

It will just slip away. It's not important enough.

[Jen]

It changed cinema.

[Caroline]

It changed. It did change cinema. In fact.

[Jen]

It changed cinema.

[Caroline]

You're saying it like it's a joke, but Two of our episodes ago, though I know it's many episodes in real life, we talked about Lord of the Rings, which must be, like, literally a peer of shrek. If it's 2000, 2001, like, they must come out at the same time. Vastly different levels of cgi and yet both change cinema forever together, hand in hand. Shrek and Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson and whoever directed this.

[Jen]

Yeah, that guy.

[Caroline]

That guy. I want to say it's like Adam Adamson or something.

[Jen]

Yes, it's just like a double name. Yes, no, totally. Because, you know, I've spoken about. We've spoken about Lord of the Rings a lot on this podcast, both in the episode itself and also, you know, around it about, like, how, you know, fantasy storytelling changed forever when Lord of the Rings came along because low budget fantasy was no longer a viable option. In the exact same way animated fairy tale stories were changed forever when Shrek came along, because it sort of. I don't know. First of all, the look and feel of it was completely different. It was the first sort of like, CGI animated movie. And now we see that as like a scourge on humanity.

[Caroline]

We really do. Yeah. There was a time where, can you remember this, animated films felt old and lame.

[Jen]

Yeah. Yeah. Because obviously Toy Story came along well before Shrek, right?

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Jen]

But Toy Story, I would say, still had very much the Disney sensibility. Yeah, very. Wasn't necessarily fairy tale, but, like, had a. Had a kind of a gentleness and a whimsy to it, and it was very much in respect of the childhood experience and, like, very precious about. Precious about preciousness. Like, I love Toy Story, but it's like, it keeps many things holy.

[Caroline]

It does, it does. And I think it didn't. I think Shrek was the first time the two streams of fairy tale and CGI were truly crossed. I'm sure there was like a shit like Barbie is Sleeping Beauty CGI in the late 90s, but it's people writing.

[Jen]

About Barbie as CGI Sleeping Beauty all the time.

[Caroline]

Okay.

[Jen]

People are obsessed with it, and I will never cover it.

[Caroline]

Well, I'm so sorry for just denigrating it on main. I've never seen it. Like, that's.

[Jen]

Yeah, yeah, but that's.

[Caroline]

I assume it was very formative, but not for me. But, like, I feel like this was the first time on. In like a mainstream way, we got fairy tale lifted out of an animated 2D world. Yes, pretty much. I can't think that there were no Disney films that predate this for that. And it Would just be smaller franchises.

[Jen]

Yes, totally.

[Caroline]

Something big and important.

[Jen]

The very act of doing that, the act of like lifting fairy tales out of its like hand drawn form or whatever. It kind of like subverted it and satirized it and like. Yeah.

[Caroline]

And I think it was necessary if I'm honest. Like there are like. Do I think the legacy of Shrek is always good? No, there's some real honkers that come after this one. Real tootin bad bits.

[Jen]

Real tootin bad bitches.

[Caroline]

I don't know what I just said. My apologies.

[Jen]

No, for total transparency. I feel like we're coming in like a pair of drunk drivers into this episode. And it's because first of all, we're on holiday.

[Caroline]

When are we not on holidays?

[Jen]

When are we not on holidays together? And second of all, we've had half a glass of wine.

[Caroline]

We have, yes. Which I think is completely par for the course actually. Really a flashback to last year when we did this all the time. But no, but genuinely, I think in the sort of tradition of fairy tale and this is the sort of the podcast within a podcast, you know, the Russian doll of podcasts. The fairy tale trilogy within magical garbage. We talked last time, we talked about the fair, about the Princess Bride and about the fairy tale tradition and the oral tradition and how the whole point of that is that no one owns the story and that every generation gets to tell it anew. And I think probably what Shrek was doing was actually slightly like breaking the chains and the monopoly on fairy tale that Disney had begun to hold, which was very earnest, very child friendly, very kind of po faced and very kind of like quite morality tales, which fairy tales shouldn't be. It should be kind of gross and it should be kind of dirty. And there should ideally be fart jokes in a fairy tale, I think. And I think Shrek kind of got back the soul of fairy tale, albeit in some uncanny valley CGI nonsense.

[Jen]

Yes, yeah, yeah, you're right. Getting back the soul of it is right because like, yeah, the fairy tales as an idea of being kind of. Everyone always talks about the original versions being sort of grimmer and more violent and messier. And like you kind of mentioned while we were watching Chaucer and you were sort of. Oh yeah, I love that you're my friend who can just unpretentiously quote Chaucer when we're watching Shrek. It's very nice. It's very like good for my health about like how these are like. I'm not saying that Chaucer is a Fairy tale. But they have things in common that, like, you know, it's like bawdy and freaky and, like. For weirdos.

[Caroline]

For weirdos. That's the thing. I think Chaucer feels like broccoli, but it's actually potatoes, you know what I mean? Like, he's actually delicious. And he's just there being like a fart in the face, you know, like, he fully is just going there. So very much in that tradition, I think. A reclamation of the gross side of fairy tales. And there's so much grossness in fairy tales as there should be.

[Jen]

And so much grossness in Shrek.

[Caroline]

So much joyous grossness. Like that opening scene, it's bawdy.

[Jen]

It's bawdy in, like, the Shakespearean sense.

[Caroline]

It so is. And it's like it sets out at stalls so early, tell a fairy tale. It's like the Beauty and the Beast opening with the book. Like, you know, it literally is a piss take of like, ah, the beautiful, beautiful young man, Blah, blah, blah, Princess in the tower.

[Jen]

And we have the beautiful score starting.

[Caroline]

Oh, it's so lovely.

[Jen]

And that's the thing as well. So you begin Shrek and you open on that beautiful score that's very similar to maybe a Lord of the Rings score or a Princess Bride score, a Mark Knopfler score. You have the.

[Caroline]

Yes. A fluting female voice.

[Jen]

That's so great. And you have the kind of beautifully hand drawn animated opening of the book and all that stuff. And it's almost like this, the movie's way of showing you, we could do it if we wanted. And we could do it really well. We could do it if we want. We have the music right here. We have the animators right here. We're choosing not to. And then you have that thing of like Shrek tearing out the page and wiping his arse with it and then coming out of his outhouse. And then you have the iconic music of some funny one. Stomach.

[Caroline]

It's so good.

[Jen]

It is one of the most iconic fucking openings.

[Caroline]

It's so good. Like, I don't remember seeing it for the first time. And I would obviously be still quite young, as were you, but I think if you were a parent and you'd taken your kid to the cinema, what would it have felt like? It would either have been the greatest, really, like, for my dad, if he was there, he'd have been like, thank fuck already we're talking about poo. Which I think there's some more uptight.

[Jen]

Parents talking about poo immediately. And Then Shrek does his shower, which is just poo following.

[Caroline]

It's just poo. He showers and shit. And he's just like. Presumably that is the effluent from the outhouse that he's taking a shower in.

[Jen]

Oh, my God. I hadn't even thought of plumbing in this one. But you follow it all.

[Caroline]

There's no plumbing in the swamp. It's all a giant composting toilet. That's where he lives.

[Jen]

Shrek is gross.

[Caroline]

Shrek canonically stinks like we know it from Donkey. He smells bad, and that's okay. But I feel like. I imagine there were some parents who were like, clutching their pearls in that moment who hadn't really fully prepared themselves. And I love that Shrek was just like, oh, yeah, yuck, yucky, yucky, yucky.

[Jen]

It's a yucky movie for yucky boys and yucky girls. It teaches yucky boys and yucky girls that they can find love. And the love they find with each other is the purest of all.

[Caroline]

The purest of all. And it's true love.

[Jen]

It's so good.

[Caroline]

I feel like yesterday when we decided. Well, we decided some weeks ago we were going to watch it yesterday, we decided we were going to watch it that day. And you were quite worried. You were like, I'm just not sure I'm gonna like it the same. And I was like, no, no, Caroline, you're gonna love it.

[Jen]

Do you know what I think where that was coming from? First of all, I think there's been, like, I don't know how sort of capital I Internet. All of my listeners are.

[Caroline]

What's capital I Internet?

[Jen]

You know, those deep, crusty memes that kind of make no sense. And the shitpostiness that's like, you know, you might see kind of a meme or a Shrek and explain, despicably has tits. You know what I mean?

[Caroline]

And I would laugh and I would share it.

[Jen]

Yeah, exactly.

[Caroline]

You know, there's a kind of, like. There's a deep.

[Jen]

In the same way that, like, going.

[Caroline]

Back to the source material. Have you gone so far from it with the memes? Can you actually go back?

[Jen]

I've seen thousands of, like, grainy, weird Shrek memes that are kind of actually in the spirit of Shrek itself, just kind of like a disgusting break from what is a beautiful and pure and white and pristine Internet. It'll just be like a grody little Shrek meme that will pop up and I'll be like, yuck. And it's very shitposty. Very internety. And I think it's again, mostly the work of Gen Z who have sort of like post rationalized, like post modernized Shrek in a sense. I was like, am I gonna actually like the original source material as much as I thought I would?

[Caroline]

Yeah, that is very fair. Do you think there are people in Gen Z who are Shrek literate in the sense of memes, but who have never seen Shrek? Because I think so.

[Jen]

I think maybe.

[Caroline]

I think it's possible. I was also kind of laughing while you were telling that story because you accidentally sent a meme last night to a group chat.

[Jen]

Did I?

[Caroline]

You were trying to send us a Shrek gif and you accidentally sent a completely incomprehensible Shrek meme. Because that's true. Because even on like the WhatsApp GIF keyboard keyboard, all you can get is the memes. You can't just use.

[Jen]

You can't get organic.

[Caroline]

You really have to to work for the organic Shrek. And this was like the April Toon fest would be great. And we were just like, great. Fantastic.

[Jen]

It's so embarrassing when it's so easy to get it wrong on the WhatsApp gift keyboard.

[Caroline]

You can't see it before you post it.

[Jen]

No.

[Caroline]

You press it and then it's gone.

[Jen]

Sort it out, Zuckerberg.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Jen]

Anyway, so we open on Shrek. He's in the swamp, he's doing his thing. He's gross and he loves it. He scares away villagers who hate him because he's a ogre and because he lives in this sort of like fairy tale adjacent land. Ogres are just like, you know, grind your bones to make their bread.

[Caroline]

It's fantastic. What a wonderful opening. And for me personally, I love the way that Shrek is basically the post child for the single woman in her 30s in his insistence on being so.

[Jen]

Moved when he was having his dinner alone.

[Caroline]

Having his dinner alone. It's very much like that French man on TikTok, you know, like, no, no, she does not hate men. She just wants to drink a martini Al. Garnished with the eyeball of her enemy. That's how I felt. He's just there. He wants to have his delicious dinner.

[Jen]

He's eating his little pumpkin stuffed with red cabbage. He's got his little earwax candle.

[Caroline]

So perimenopausal of him. I love him.

[Jen]

I love him.

[Caroline]

And then it's ruined by people. Oh, no. Sorry.

[Jen]

And then it's ruined by people.

[Caroline]

It's ruined by people. And suddenly all the fairytale creatures have come and taken refuge.

[Jen]

Yes.

[Caroline]

In his swamp.

[Jen]

In his swamp.

[Caroline]

In his swamp.

[Jen]

And I guess, like, this is the part of the story where, like, Shrek's storyline and Shrek's sort of origins become, like, quite interesting. If you're kind of. If you're the kind of person who's interested in the kind of, like, corporate machinations of the Disney company. Yeah, they're sort of fascinating. And the short. The shortened. The short version of that is there was this guy who worked at Disney for many years, and he was called Jeffrey Katzenberg, I believe. And then in the 90s, a guy called Michael Eisner took over. And Michael Eisner is sort of often credited with being, like, the imaginative downfall of Disney. Like, there was, like, good Lord. Like, it's an insane legacy to have.

[Caroline]

That's. That's, like Liz Truss levels of legacies.

[Jen]

Oh, my God. He is Liz Truss's own. He's Disney's Liz Truss. He is. Okay, like, people. I mean, I'm not a Disney adult, but I have known some in my time, and I certainly dabble in the forums every now and then because I'm just interested in obsessives in general and, like, the way they talk about that man, he's, like, really despised. Because there was this time in the early 90s where, you know, we had Beauty and the Beast and we had the Little Mermaid, and it was actually a return to fairy tale customs and lush animation and big music and all that kind of stuff. And then, I believe, from what I hear, Eisner kind of got rid of all that because he wanted to focus on the parks, and he wanted to focus on the retail experience and making Disney as corporate as possible. Getting rid of all the imagineers, getting rid of all the kind of creative freedom that apparently made Disney Disney.

[Caroline]

Oh, I hate him.

[Jen]

So Jeffrey Katzenberg, because he hated him, split, founded DreamWorks with, I believe, Spielberg and somebody else whose name I know but can't remember.

[Caroline]

Look, I can quote Chaucer, but you really know a lot about the film industry. And between us, we are powerful.

[Jen]

Between us, we are powerful, powerful women in the arts. And I could be sort of wrong on the details of this. And essentially what Shrek became was they had a few kind of like, sort of scuffles where, you know, ants and Bug's Life came out in the same year. I think Bug's Life was Disney and. Oh, my God, remember that, right? The two Bug movies, the big insect.

[Caroline]

Super bowl.

[Jen]

Where, for my money, I prefer ants. I know it's not the popular choice.

[Caroline]

I don't remember either. They blur into one big.

[Jen]

That's fair enough. They're the same film.

[Caroline]

They are the same film.

[Jen]

But I think answer's marginalized.

[Caroline]

Corporate espionage, I reckon.

[Jen]

Yes. And so then Shrek came out, and then, you know, that kind of brings us to where we are in the story now, which is this character who is quite actively shitting on the legacy of Disney. And I just find that fairly rock and roll as far as corporate stories about cartoons go.

[Caroline]

Yeah. And I definitely. Now that you say that, I am aware, and I'm sort of skipping ahead here, but we'll come back to it. That duloc, I believe, is meant to be a sort of cipher for the Disney parks.

[Jen]

Yes, yes. I mean, they are. Right.

[Caroline]

I mean, it does look very much like one, does it not, when you see it on the. On the horizon.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

So there is definitely that sense of just like, fuck those guys.

[Jen]

And you have to wonder is like. I mean, is part of what makes Shrek so good is that it was created by someone with a grudge?

[Caroline]

Probably, yes.

[Jen]

Is it the finest example we have of grudge art? I don't know.

[Caroline]

It could. I mean, I guess. I don't know. When they made it, do you know, do we think they expected it to be the kind of breakout hit that it was, or did they expect it to be a kind of grody little B movie? Some people love it because, like, it. It, like, really sails very close to the wind in a few places, you know?

[Jen]

Go on.

[Caroline]

Well, I mean, number one is a refugee camp in the opening five minutes, like, at this point in, like, American history, the early 2000s, there's a cookie who gets waterboarded.

[Jen]

Not long afterwards, there's a cookie who gets waterboarded. You forget that because I haven't seen this since I was, you know, a teenager, and I was like, oh, Mr. Gingerbread man is getting waterboarded.

[Caroline]

Waterboarded Guantanamo Bay style. Right. Like, I feel like they really go in for, like, a touch of, like, Disney sucks, but also, so does American government.

[Jen]

Like, wow.

[Caroline]

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. But I feel like, no, I think there's. There's literally like, a refugee camp on Shark Store, I think. I think they knew that that was a thing. You know, those. Those do exist.

[Jen]

Yeah. Wow. Interesting.

[Caroline]

And Shrek, of course, being an actual hero is like, listen, unlike America, I don't want refugees. But what I'm going to do, therefore, is try to make sure they can go back where they came from and fight for their homeland, which is Dulaq. He's not just like, oh, I don't want you here. Go away. He's like, I don't want you here, so I'm going to help you go back to where you belong, which is your forest.

[Jen]

That's true. And while he calls them freaks, he is still fighting on behalf of their rights.

[Caroline]

If he fights on behalf of the rights of the freaks. I'm dramatic King.

[Jen]

He doesn't want to hang out with them. No, but that's the thing.

[Caroline]

I mean, he doesn't. It's about what you do by the end. Doesn't he? Doesn't he? I think there's a lot there. I think there's a kind of subtle political commentary. There's commentary on a lot in this film.

[Jen]

And it's just so funny.

[Caroline]

It's just very funny.

[Jen]

That's the thing. The ideas remain good. The jokes remain funny, you know, and so few things have that. So few things. So many things. Particularly when we're talking about comedies, it's where, like, the ideas fall apart because they're, like, homophobic or transphobic or any kind of thing or whatever, or just outdated or not very smart. But the jokes are still funny. And you laugh in spite of yourself. But, like, it's ideologically sound. It's story, tale sound, and it's also fucking funny. Like, the. The action moves at such a clip in Shrek. It's really very inspiring, right?

[Caroline]

You get through so much.

[Jen]

You process a lot of story. And like, we were talking about this because, you know, one of the pieces of feedback you get a lot as both a novelist and a screenwriter is. Is the main character active enough? And that is kind of generally where stories fall apart is because the main character is having things happen to them and they're not making strong enough choices. And that's a really annoying piece of feedback. But unfortunately, it's always right because you see something like Shrek, and you're like, okay, you have his character and something has happened to him, which is that there is, like, fairy tale refugees on his land. But he immediately makes a choice. And then that choice is to go confront the Lord. Lord, sorry, Lord Farquaad, who we'll get to in a minute, played by John Lithgow, who's amazing.

[Caroline]

Amazing. Most recently seen in Conclave.

[Jen]

Most recently seen Conclave and, like, what.

[Caroline]

A CG.

[Jen]

Third Rock from the Sun. Shrek and Conclave.

[Caroline]

That man's got Range.

[Jen]

I believe he's also playing Roald Dahl on the West End.

[Caroline]

I mean, fucking sweet.

[Jen]

What can't he do?

[Caroline]

You go, john Lithgow. Lithgow. I don't know how you say his name.

[Jen]

He goes to duloc, confronts Lord Farquaad and then like doubles down on a second quest which is to save the princess. The side quest has the best little sidekick that there ever there was.

[Caroline]

How have we got this far into this podcast and not spoken about Eddie Murphy's finest role?

[Jen]

Discuss Eddie Murphy's finest role, comma, discuss. Question.

[Caroline]

Because you still think Mushu. I think Donkey far finer.

[Jen]

You think Donkey's a finer?

[Caroline]

Yeah, finer than. Yes, Mushu. I enjoy Mushu. And look, we watched Mulan recently, but which won't be mentioned on this podcast, but we watched it and he is great, but he's not Donkey. And I know Eddie Murphy also had live action roles, but this is obviously where he really shines.

[Jen]

It's funny, isn't it, that like Eddie Murphy, even though he was like so famous as like a very kind of near the knuckle edgy comedian that his sort of like cinematic legacy will be children's films.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Jen]

Like he's in some great movies that I love. Like he was in the great movie called Boomerang that I love and like coming to America, obviously. But in terms of like what's going to be in the archives for hundreds of years, I think it's going to be Mulan and Shrek and maybe Dr. Dolittle because he's very good at that too.

[Caroline]

Yes, very fair, Very fair. No, I think, I think Donkey is like, where did that come from?

[Jen]

Yeah. And like once they'd animated donkey where they're like, you know who would be great for this?

[Caroline]

Eddie Murphy.

[Jen]

Eddie Murphy. Like looking at that donkey as a drawing, I wouldn't be like, you know who would be great for this? Eddie Murphy comedian.

[Caroline]

But even just like, I mean, I know there are definitely talking animals in fairy tales and there's probably one about a donkey that I don't know. But the donkey, he's so weird looking. He's such a weird looking little freak. You know, he's such a weird looking little freak and he's, he's very powerful. I think there is really no Shrek without Donkey. And also the fact that he's just called Donkey.

[Jen]

I know. And that dragon is just called Dragon.

[Caroline]

I love, I love the limited commitments.

[Jen]

It's really good.

[Caroline]

And the Lord is just called Fuckwad. Like, I really don't think they thought this was gonna be the hit that it was. They were so lazy. Like, yeah, it's called Donkey. Let's call it Fuckwad. Call it Dragon Donkey. Side note, for anyone who's ever heard us talk about Sylv, Sylvie, your dragon, who gets a starring role in Continental Garbage because she farts so much near us, which Shrek would love. Donkey has basically the exact same proportions as Sylv. And so the whole of the movie yesterday, we were just like, so Sylph. Every time he did anything, the expressive.

[Jen]

Ears, the short, fat, little round body, the elegant head.

[Caroline]

The elegant head, the long nose, it made me think that maybe whoever was animating this did have some kind of Jack Russell with questionable heritage, like a Chihuahua as a grandparent or something.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

And I just think maybe that was what did it.

[Jen]

I love Donkey. It makes me so sad when he's mean to Donkey.

[Caroline]

It makes everyone so sad when he's mean to Donkey.

[Jen]

When he makes Donkey sleep outside. Oh.

[Caroline]

But when they're gonna swap manly stories, I mean, Shrek is a.

[Jen]

When Donkey runs onto the chair and says, we're gonna stay up all night. We're gonna swap manly stories in the morning, I'm making.

[Caroline]

Wait.

[Jen]

Oh, it's so good.

[Caroline]

That's how I feel whenever I stay over at a friend's house now.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

I'm just like, end of the morning, I'm making waffles. Love him.

[Jen]

Love him. I just love him.

[Caroline]

I mean, I thought we should say something more useful than we love him.

[Jen]

I know. I know. We love him.

[Caroline]

He's just great.

[Jen]

He's just great.

[Caroline]

But. Okay. No, that's what I was gonna say.

[Jen]

Okay.

[Caroline]

I do think that part of Drek. It's a tale about overcoming your own negative self talk.

[Jen]

Same way.

[Caroline]

It's a tale. Well, I mean, we'll come to that. Shrek, his belief that everyone must hate him.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

You know, it's a tale about finding a place in the world, but it's also a tale about positive masculine influences, of which Donkey is, of course, one.

[Jen]

Oh, my God, say more. So much more.

[Caroline]

Donkey is the friend I wish so many men had. Yeah. So many men who are, like, weird and, like, I want them to have a friend, like Donkey, who just loves, like, uncomplicatedly, who, within seconds is like, I'm here for you.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

You know, I'll tell you, you need a Tic Tac, but I think you're cool, and I want to be your pal. And none of people have that, particularly men. You know, there is A male loneliness epidemic. And famously, it is not on women to fix, another men to fix. And the way that will happen is if there are more men like Donkey. That's what I think.

[Jen]

I think so too. I think we had that specific realization at the very end when they rescue the princess and she's gonna marry Farquaad and all that kind of stuff. And then he comes back and it's very good Will Hunting. He's very like, yes, and I forgive you. Because that's what friends do. And it's like, yes. Is Donkey lonely and desperate and clingy? Absolutely. But he has put, you know, stark into Shrek. He has put the hours and the whatever into Shrek. And he's like, no, I'm not letting this go. And you haven't said sorry, but I know you're gonna regret it because I know you very well. So I'm gonna skip the part where you have to say sorry. Yes. And I'm just gonna forgive you.

[Caroline]

I'm just gonna forgive you because we.

[Jen]

Are on a time limit. She's gonna marry Farquaat.

[Caroline]

He just loves him. I think it takes a very pure heart to love without expecting someone to, like, be able to hold you back the same way. And Donkey has that.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

Even in those first moments when they meet. And Shaq's like, you know what I am? And Donkey's like, really, really tall. Like, he's so dumb, but so pure.

[Jen]

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[Caroline]

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[Caroline]

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[Caroline]

Is it too early for me to talk about my new theory on the two types of masculinity?

[Jen]

Please go on.

[Caroline]

You know this theory. I know you know, because of course, we've been alone for several days. The two sort of. The spectrum of masculinity runs from grilling to jet Ski. And that is based, of course, on the fact that we're on holiday. And the two main types of men we've experienced this holiday.

[Jen]

Yes.

[Caroline]

Are the grill man. That's Gavin. That's Gavin, the man who, when he was here.

[Jen]

So we're in this like this house that has an outdoor grill.

[Caroline]

It's got an outdoor grill. It's beautiful. It overlooks a lovely river and a lake. It's so nice. It's honestly, it's really good, guys. But Gavin, when he was here, he'd get to like lunchtime, be like, I'm gonna fire up the grill. I'm gonna just get those hot coals going. Like he was in the bottom of the Titanic. You know, he was just like shoveling.

[Jen]

It in and we were like, Gavin, it's 30 degrees. You do not need to stand over hot coals for two hours. Is it warm enough so we can cook prawns?

[Caroline]

He's like, no, but my women need prawns. All of them. My mother in law, my wife, my friend, they all need to eat prawns and they need to be grilled prawns. And he just made these delicious prawns all the time. And we had such wonderful food. And as he was leaving, he was a bit like, you know, do you have enough stuff for the grill? And we were like, oh, honey, no, we're not using that. Once you're gone, we're gonna work out how this oven works. But we also probably won't need it because it'll just be cheese and crackers anyway. So that's like the healthy, masculine. You know, it's like for men, fire is the kind of witchcraft that they have. They can build fires. Very few women care about making a fire, a barbecue or like a, you know, a wood managed hot tub. No interest.

[Jen]

Yes. Women can build small private fires in their home for atmosphere.

[Caroline]

Yeah. A candle that's called I believe or candle.

[Jen]

Maybe some incense. But they're not going out of their way to build a lot of fire based fun.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Big green eggs are exclusively for men.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

You know, but then the other type of man we've encountered because we are staying on a river is men on jet skis who just bomb it down. Do Donuts look like absolute tits, to be honest. Who do they think they're impressing? Not me, not you, not their friends.

[Jen]

I hate jet skis so much.

[Caroline]

Jet skis, so, so powerfully.

[Jen]

Like, I hate them on moral, ethical reasons. Oh yeah, because of, you know, what they do to the oceans and what they do to the environment and how pointless they are. But I just hate them because, like every single person who's on them is a wanker. Is a wanker. It turns people into bad people.

[Caroline]

It does turn people into bad people.

[Jen]

It makes. It's like imagine if you were like on a beautiful river that's like shrouded by trees in the Portuguese mountains and you were like, you know what this needs? A roaring engine, right? And like a man. A man just doing donuts.

[Caroline]

A man just doing donuts. Like, it's so. Particularly today, it's much more atmospheric. It's like there's mist coming off the hills. It's very. We were saying earlier, it's very, it's very twilight. Very twilight. You don't need a jet ski in that. But there are a lot of jet skis. I don't think it's that it makes people bad. I think bad people go on jet skis. I think it reveals the badness within them. And I think that this film also has that dichotomy. It has the grilling man, that Shrek who we saw early on making his delicious treats. And we've got the jet ski man, which is Farquaad. Farquaad. He would ride a jet ski.

[Jen]

Yeah, yeah. Because there's something inevitably extremely self centered and vulgar about the jet ski man. Awful. Awful. It speaks to a kind of like, I need artificial props to feel important. That's what a jet ski does for a man. And that's what Farquaad's little stilts do for him.

[Caroline]

His little weird gauntlets for the leg.

[Jen]

He's such a mental character.

[Caroline]

Yes. And I mean, I remember we said earlier, unproblematic, Nothing's aged badly. There's a world where probably someone could go, the number of short jokes were bad, but he is so dreadful that it actually has aged completely fine.

[Jen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Caroline]

You know, he is short and he is awful. He's not awful because he's short, but it's an easy thing to take the piss out of.

[Jen]

Yes. I did sort of wonder, is this some kind of like Tom Cruise thing as well? A famous psycho who is very short is always doing sort of optical illusions in order to make sure people think he's tall. Even though no one knows he's. Everyone knows he's short.

[Caroline]

I mean, maybe if whoever this guy was who started DreamWorks had a personal beef against Tom Cruise. I think it's just a very low hanging fruit for men to take the piss out of. Like, I think fewer women care about it than men do generally.

[Jen]

Yeah, fair enough.

[Caroline]

But it is funny that he's so tiny.

[Jen]

He's just funny to look at.

[Caroline]

This is a good visual.

[Jen]

Every time there's like he gets off his horse and he's very tiny. It's just so good.

[Caroline]

The opening scene where he's walking along and his like his face and then his legs and then he just toot toot tootles in like the size of a five year old.

[Jen]

Yeah. I think we meet him when he's waterboarding the gingerbread man.

[Caroline]

We do meet him waterboarding gingerbread man. Which is not a great look for anyone on an opening scene. No, but I think he's. Yeah, he's a short little guy. But it is a great visual gag. And we talked about this last night. Actually. The fact that there are so many things in Shrek that I think was almost lost by the quite quickly diminishing art of CGI films is that a lot of what Shrek does is allow for visual humor in that if you're creating every single scene. Like if you are going to be CGI ing every little tiny bit, you have, like you take the time to put some funny Easter eggs in. I think there were like. You don't get those easter eggs in 2D animation in the way that you do in CGI. People are still dissecting Shrek to find new ones. No, actually I think my favorite one is it's really early in the film. I think it's when they arrive at duloc and they meet the man. And this is sort of. Have we seen Farquaad? We have seen Farquaad and he's got this huge head and these tiny little legs and he sees Shrek and he's terrified and he runs into the gate, but he runs all the way through the little, the little barrier because he will not. He just refuses to go against the rules. And they really hold on it for like 10 seconds.

[Jen]

It's so funny. And yeah, he's just like going around and around the velvet robe kind of thing. And your right runs to each corner of it and around and eventually falls. Because it's so good. It's such a brilliant piece of like. Cause we see so little of Dulac it's only a few minutes of screen time, but we need to really establish. This guy is, like, a miserable freak who wants everything to be perfect. And he's essentially eugenicist. And so, like, his lowliest employee would rather run from one end of the velvet rope to the other while escaping, while he thinks running for his life. It's very good.

[Caroline]

It's just so good.

[Jen]

And then they go in and they have that, like. It's a very, like, Shirley Jackson moment, almost eerie silence of, like, an empty Disney Park. And then my favorite part is when they go up to the thing, like, what's this? And they do, do, do, do. And then the kind of the puppets emerge or whatever, and it's basically like a riff on, like, It's a Small World kind of. Which, if you go back to our Theme parks episode, there's a lovely, tearful deconstruction of why Sarah Griffin loves It's a Small World so much. And its creator, Mary Blair, who we love, but it's such a funny thing to take a piss out of. And the bit that always gets me, and it's gotten me since I was 11 years old, is the, like, shine your shoes, Wipe your face again.

[Caroline]

A visual gag.

[Jen]

Really good little visual gags. And then that thing just kind of slams shut and takes the picture. That's just so. It's such an unusual pace of joke for an animated film for children. It kind of feels more like a Simpsons moment or something. Yes. Like something they always say about the Simpsons. As a Simpsons nerd who never gets to talk about it on this podcast.

[Caroline]

Go for it now. Take your moment.

[Jen]

One of the amazing things that sitcom that, like, the Simpsons did is that, like, usually a sitcom like that, that has that many jokes, has a live studio audience, and so every single scene is building up to a joke that eventually breaks and is interrupted by clapping. And the clapping amounts for, like, 10 or 12 seconds or even. Even three or four seconds. Right. But when you have, like, something that's written like a sitcom but it's animated, it's cramming more jokes in because it's not building and breaking. It's just stuffing stuff in. So you have these strange little awkward moments where, like, you could see that, like that moment with Donkey and Shrek getting their picture taken by the machine, and it's kind of awkward and odd. That could be a real Homer and Bart moment. You know, it's, like, very. Oh, this is a place where clapping or laughing would traditionally go, but there's not. So we're just gonna hang here. And the kind of frailty of the moment makes it funnier.

[Caroline]

That's the thing. The way they hold on it and the way you just sit there, you see it and then it's like the little thing comes out. Like there's a luxuriousness to these jokes.

[Jen]

Yeah, it's taking its time.

[Caroline]

It's just like, yeah, we've got time. And you wouldn't do that in live action. I don't think in the same way. Maybe you would.

[Jen]

Yeah, I don't. Yeah, something very specifically animated about it and something that makes it funnier because it's animated, because it's taking its time to like acknowledge those strange little moments.

[Caroline]

Something just about almost. Even if you don't really think about it, you know that every scene was like made by human hands. You know, it's not set up, it's not props. It's like someone took the time.

[Jen]

But even though it's cgi, so in a certain sense it's not made by human hands.

[Caroline]

It's not like a hand drawn sound. No, you're right. But it's got that sense of kind of like everything that every single thing you see, we chose for it to happen. There's no serendipity in cgi. It is always choiceful. You can't like have an accidental joke. It's not like, you know, you hear about in films where Aragorn stubs his toe and he breaks it and he screams or like they're. They ad libbed something in the moment and the director tried to decided to keep it in. That doesn't happen in animated films. Every single moment has been chosen.

[Jen]

That's true. So even when they're cgi, they are the most. You're right. Choiceful mediums because everything is painstaking and I guess this is like, you know, we spoke at the beginning about how Shrek and Lord of the Rings have this thing in common in that like, you know, we had this tradition of fantasy storytelling that Lord of the Rings broke. We had this tradition of animated fairy tale storytelling that Shrek broke. But the thing that came after Lord of the Rings was that like, yes, we got your Game of Thrones and stuff, but we also got quite self serious, overblown, kind of toxic misogynist fantasy that was bleak and dark and kind of uninspiring and sort of muscled out a lot of the girls, gays and dweebs that loved it beforehand. Right.

[Caroline]

Yeah. It kind of put Princess Bride to the sword, didn't it?

[Jen]

It did. And Then Shrek brought it back a little bit. But what Shrek did then was that, like, it was such a phenomenon that it created this sort of craze that had kind of reigned for like, 15 years of just like ugly, ugly CGI movies that became less and less thoughtful as they went on more and more mass produced, where they just slapped huge movie stars on them. And then just like, it was what, like, I feel like Shrek. The first one was Shrek. Then it was like Ice Age, which are still very funny.

[Caroline]

I actually love ice cream.

[Jen]

But, like, they, you know, they made probably way more of those than they needed to. And then it's stuff like the Croods, whatever the fuck that is.

[Caroline]

At least we recognize the Croods. Unlike the thing that I think you're going to reference.

[Jen]

The thing I'm about to reference, which is one of my favorite videos on the Internet, is the sort of the.

[Caroline]

Formless blobs that became CGI films more and more over time. Formless, forgettable blobs.

[Jen]

And here's this one, and this is this. This phenomenon was completely summarized by a phenomenon called Zendaya is Michi. Now, Zendaya, as we all know, is a Disney star. She was in some kind of film, the name of which I still don't know.

[Caroline]

It was a. She was a blob.

[Jen]

She was a like a blob with a face. And she was starring alongside many other.

[Caroline]

Stars, like Danny DeVito.

[Jen]

Like, yeah. And somebody is basically, imagine. Imagine a young hot man walking during golden hour down a street where the entire street is papered with adverts for this fly poster. Fly posters for the CGI blob movie that no one under no one will ever see or has ever seen. And, okay, that's what I'm about to play now. Me and LeBron James is Danny, Davido is Dorgo. Gina Rodriguez is Coca Cola. So that's where we got to. That's where Shrek led us.

[Caroline]

It literally Lord of the Rings led.

[Jen]

Us to rape on screen in Game of Thrones, right? And Shrek led us to Zendaya Michi.

[Caroline]

Which is actually a better legacy, all.

[Jen]

In all, I think at least we got. And like. So it's sort of like it. Crowbar opened an industry that led to so much bleak, freaky, horrible, ugly movies.

[Caroline]

Sonos that missed the point because they looked at Shrek and they went, mike Myers is Shrek, Cameron Diaz is Fiona.

[Jen]

Eddie Murphy is Donkey, and Mike Meyer is a Shrek.

[Caroline]

Oh, my God, can we remake it? Can we remake it? As the trailer for the Shrek podcast. Okay.

[Jen]

Johnliest Go is Farquaad so funny.

[Caroline]

That's. That's the problem. They looked at that and they thought that's what it was. They looked at the ingredients of Shrek and they got the wrong ones.

[Jen]

You know what made this work? Not the.

[Caroline]

Not the sharp script.

[Jen]

Not the kind of messages about loving the ugliest parts of yourself.

[Caroline]

Not the genre defying changes.

[Jen]

It's the famous people being voices and also references. People thought that referencing other movies was, like, the key to making a good movie.

[Caroline]

No.

[Jen]

And when I remember even, like, watching it last night, I kind of cringed a little when they do this thing where they rescue Fiona and there's like a whole thing where she beats up as a Matrix and the Matrix scene. And then in the Shrek 2, there's a Lord of the Rings scene. And, like, they didn't offend me, but I was expecting them to because they spawned something. Yuck.

[Caroline]

I was like, it's fine, because you were the first ones to do it. It's like, you know when you're on one of the apps on Instagram and you see what's probably the first person to use a new song to do a thing, and you're like, oh, that's quite funny. And then you see someone else do the exact same thing with the same music, which I know is the point of TikTok.

[Jen]

And by the third time, it means in a certain sense, I'm just like.

[Caroline]

It'S not funny anymore. The first person did it was funny. The second person did it was derivative. And the third person did it is a fucking idiot. So stop it. It's how I feel. But that's how it went that way with Shrek. Quite badly.

[Jen]

It went that way. Yeah.

[Caroline]

It spawned some bad bits. It spawned some great things too.

[Jen]

It did. So in the story we're up to, Shrek has accepted the quest.

[Caroline]

Gosh, we haven't got very Farquhar. Then they a moment for Farquaad's the Amount He Owns owes to Prince Humperdinck.

[Jen]

Yes.

[Caroline]

In Princess Bride, like, that is a direct reference.

[Jen]

I mean, that's what brought us to Shrek in the first place, is because we watched the Princess Bride and we realized that Shrek has borrowed lots from. In a very loving and careful and like, and beautiful way. It has borrowed a lot from the Princess Bride, which in turn was borrowing a lot from Monty Python. And I feel like they're all of a lineage, and they're in so much of a lineage that John Cleese is even in the second one.

[Caroline]

Of course. Of course he is. But like, let's just, you know, Farquaad, I believe his. I was about to say his executor, his executioner is called Thelonious, which is so close to Tyrone. He loves to watch him work.

[Jen]

Tyrone, you know, I love to watch him work. Yeah. So then we get to the. They, Donkey and Shrek, they journey to.

[Caroline]

They journey to a castle far away in the middle of a volcano in a lake of boiling lava. Having had also a lovely little dig at the Bachelorette on the way.

[Jen]

Oh, yeah.

[Caroline]

Which I do enjoy. Like, I feel like that's the thing that again, this film is 20 years old, but still just very on the nose about.

[Jen]

Okay, so it's the where about the way Haraquad is looking through his potential.

[Caroline]

Brides and one of them is mentally abused Princess. This broad's got seven men living with her. But don't let that put you off.

[Jen]

Like, but that doesn't mean she's easy. It was like in a children's film.

[Caroline]

Exactly. I mean, the most obvious thing to say about Shrek is it's not a film for children. But that's true of fairy tale too. So we like that. We like that. So they arrive at the castle and I mean, there's a lot to be said about the way they get there and the sort of low level psychological torment that Shrek subjects Donkey to, which is not his finest moment. But again, Donkey.

[Jen]

What if he did a donkey?

[Caroline]

The bridge.

[Jen]

Oh, the bridge is scary.

[Caroline]

That's one of the moments where I do feel really bad for Donkey. He hasn't got hands. He can't cling onto the railings.

[Jen]

He hasn't got hands.

[Caroline]

He's got hooves. I would never do that to Sylph.

[Jen]

No.

[Caroline]

But there we are. They find Fiona. And like, yeah, when you first meet Fiona, you're just like, oh, no.

[Jen]

Oh, no.

[Caroline]

Well, she's. She's so wed pilled.

[Jen]

She's so wed pilled. Princess Fiona, the sort of the lying.

[Caroline]

Back with her little lips extended, waiting for true love's first kiss.

[Jen]

The thing what makes Princess Fiona such an eternal character is that she's a single woman who lives alone with her large pet.

[Caroline]

Her beautiful large pet.

[Jen]

Her beautiful large pet. And she has let culture teach her what to expect from straight monogamous relationships. And she has gone badly wrong.

[Caroline]

She has gone so wrong. And I think the thing that's uncomfortable watching Fiona is the realization that you've met people who've had A maybe less obvious, but still the same experience as Fiona, which is, you must be my true love. You're rescuing me. I was alone before and now you're here. So you must be my true love.

[Jen]

It's so the phenomena of girls who are single for a little while and then they just meet some guy, and then they're like, you're my true love. And they're like, huh?

[Caroline]

Like what?

[Jen]

Like my true love.

[Caroline]

And then they introduce you to the friends and you're just like, he seems like a man.

[Jen]

Yeah, he's fine. Yeah. No, no true love.

[Caroline]

No one's ever been better than this. This brave knight has rescued me from the horrors of self determination.

[Jen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's just writing stories herself. She's just like.

[Caroline]

She's fully in there.

[Jen]

Just. Yeah, completely. She's read some books, she's read some magazines. She knows how love should go, and she will force that upon someone. Unless that person is a strong grilling.

[Caroline]

Man, such as Shrek, who was like.

[Jen]

No, no, I reject your expectations of me. I will bring you out of yourself.

[Caroline]

He does. He doesn't mean to, but he does. And I think, actually, weirdly, you have a sort of a mirror or like an echo in dragon, because dragon, again, like dragon. We meet dragon and we think dragon is. We assume all dragons are coded male. You know, dragon is man, dragon is big, angry man. This is a lady dragon. We don't see those a lot in fiction. And she's been in this castle for a long time, and she is also just wanting love.

[Jen]

They're just two girls in love. They're just two housemates in love.

[Caroline]

They're two single gals who have been just, like, really having a bad time on the apps. And one of them is like, oh, my true love has come because he's rescued me. And the other's like, this will do.

[Jen]

Yeah, yeah.

[Caroline]

This talking donkey will do.

[Jen]

And she's like, he has a friend. And she's like, exactly, he has a friend.

[Caroline]

And that's just like. That's all the dragon wants, is to be loved. And instead she gets a Chaucer moment.

[Jen]

She does have a Chaucer moment.

[Caroline]

That's. The Chaucer moment is when she's trying to kiss Don Quixote, and instead she kisses Shrek's hairy nether eye, which is his asshole. It's his asshole. Which is a reference to the Wife of Bath by Jeffrey Chaucer, which is a great little read.

[Jen]

It's nice to know there are some jokes that have just been in speculation for hundreds of years and are always funny because, like, bums and farts are always funny.

[Caroline]

Seven hundred years later, it's still extremely funny when you mean to kiss a mouth and you accidentally kiss an asshole and it never worked.

[Jen]

The Nether Mouth.

[Caroline]

The Nether Eye.

[Jen]

The Nether Eye. Sorry.

[Caroline]

The Nether Eye. And I believe in the Chaucer. The man who kisses the Nether Eye is like, oh, I didn't know you had a beard. It's disgusting.

[Jen]

I would not know these things if we weren't friends.

[Caroline]

Exactly. He'd be like, oh, Chaucer. It's all to say poodly. Poodly. Poodly. No, rancid. That's how we love it. So they get rescued and I actually do. Like, it's nice watching Shrek again when you know that dragon has a happy ending. Because I did feel really sad for her. Do you know, like, when she just runs herself around, like, the Labyrinth Underground, and then she gets left behind and.

[Jen]

She'S like, ooh, it is sad.

[Caroline]

And you're like, no, she just wanted to be loved.

[Jen]

I have no idea how her and Donkey's sex life works out, but apparently it does. I mean.

[Caroline]

I mean, I know we're not Talking about Shrek 2 tonight, although we did watch them both, because why wouldn't you? And in Shrek 2, for those who haven't seen it, Shrek and Donkey both drink a potion which transforms them into hot versions of themselves, and it also transforms their partners into hot versions of themselves. And the thing that's never seen, but I will always want to know, is, what did Dragon become?

[Jen]

What did Dragon become? Come.

[Caroline]

So we then get into what's actually kind of the true emotional heart of.

[Jen]

This film, which is Shrek and Fiona.

[Caroline]

Shrek and Fiona's love story. And it's good that this film manages to go through so many different phases. You know, there's the setup. There's the unproblematic king. Political drama.

[Jen]

Yes.

[Caroline]

There's the quest, the typical quest. And then there's the love story.

[Jen]

And the love story, because movies like this, for example, the Princess Bride, where it's just, like, exciting scene after exciting scene, just. Just all these good scenes and no bad ones. Generally, the things that gets shortchanged in those stories is the love story. Because love stories, they need to be filled with quiet moments and dialogue and, you know, little things that are. You need to put the time into them. Right? And so that's why we rely so heavily on beauty in love stories, because we have Been trained by fairy tales and media that has, you know, come from fairy tales and everything that, like, beauty is the sort of shorthand to virtue of some kind. And so we look at people's faces and we see, you know, perfect sparkling eyes and clear skin and lovely hair. And we think, lovely. And then we think of someone of the opposite gender, you know, in traditional media who has the same qualities. And you go, they must, of course, these two match. They should be together.

[Caroline]

Totally.

[Jen]

But Shrek does not have that.

[Caroline]

No.

[Jen]

So it has a genuinely lovely long segment of them really, falling in love.

[Caroline]

And that is, I think, too obviously, to see that dialogue with the Princess Bride. That is, if I were going to level one criticism of the Princess Bride, as if I would. It is that there really is nothing between Wesley and Buttercup other than their mutual hardness.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

Like, I have no idea why they're into one another.

[Jen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Caroline]

None at all.

[Jen]

And it's very much a part of the sort of slight satire of the piece is that, like, you're beautiful, of course, you know.

[Caroline]

Yeah. So obviously we. But. But Shrek and Fiona, of course, they're not beautiful, but to me, and there is a certain irony this. They are the kind of the Before Midnight of the fairy tale genre.

[Jen]

Oh, you mean the Richard Ignater, as.

[Caroline]

In which we spent a lot of time talking about last year, where the point of that film is like, two beautiful people meet on a train and you're like, well, obviously they're gonna get together.

[Jen]

They're beautiful.

[Caroline]

But you get to see all their yuckiness and all their realness. And I think with Shrek and Fiona, we kind of get Before Midnight, not least because they have to fall in love before midnight because she turns into a fucking ogre.

[Jen]

Very nice.

[Caroline]

Yes, thank you. See, where did that.

[Jen]

Very good stuff.

[Caroline]

Very good stuff. Yes, yes. Watch our episodes on Before Midnight on this Spotlight.

[Jen]

They're really good episodes.

[Caroline]

They are actually really good. But I think once we get there, as we get that sense of. Of two real people actually falling in love. And the thing that's so wonderful is that they. And you said this earlier in a way that I would probably butcher, but I'll try and say it anyway, and you were like, oh, normally it's about. Like, oh, it's not just about enough to be beautiful on the outside. These couples have to also prove that they're beautiful on the inside. And that's not where Shrek and Fiona fall in love. They fall in love because they are both yucky on the inside.

[Jen]

They're both yucky, yucky people. And this is the true, like, the true valor of love. The true valor of romantic love is not having, like, special Instagram moments and, like, saying perfect things in a perfect way. Although it can be. It is like being yucky in front of someone for the first time and finding out they are also yucky. It's having, like, little dark treasures with someone. And in Shrek and Fiona's Love Story, it's very much like, what is it? He. He's being bothered by flies, and she gets, like, two sticks and a cobweb, and she creates a little candy floss.

[Caroline]

And then he eats it.

[Jen]

And he eats it.

[Caroline]

And the bit where she's singing to.

[Jen]

A bird and then the bird explodes.

[Caroline]

And then she eats the bird's young for breakfast.

[Jen]

Yeah, it's.

[Caroline]

I was like, yes.

[Jen]

And, like, they. They inflate like a frog and a snake and they make balloons out of them.

[Caroline]

And every single one of those moments is more special than anything in the Princess Bride in terms of believableness.

[Jen]

It feels very special.

[Caroline]

You do feel that they've fallen, and they fall in love very quickly. Like, this is a couple of days.

[Jen]

And that's why when you hear couples talk about their private lives together, they're not generally talking about their anniversary dinners or their holidays. They're talking about the really good blackhead they found on each other, you know?

[Caroline]

Yeah, I've heard that story certainly from friends. That's how, you know, I feel like. I'm not saying that every, like, close couple should be taking a dump in front of one another on the regular, but, you know, like, if I know someone who's been dating someone for a year and they still never farted in front of him, I'm just like, oh, there's a problem there, because everyone's a bit yucky. Yeah, you gotta just. I'm not saying get into it in a joyful way like you're playing the accordion, but just, like, accept. Just accept that, like, you both have bodies and you're both a bit yucky and, like, have bad habits and have a little bit of letting someone into your closest self.

[Jen]

Yeah. Because yuckiness is vulnerability.

[Caroline]

Yuckiness is vulnerability.

[Jen]

And basically, like, the whole challenge of sort of any kind of monogamous code, like domestic life, is trying to be authentic to your yuckiness while also leaving enough gaps for mystery that they still want to have sex with you. And there is an entire industry all based on the only reason Esther Perel is in work is because this problem persists is that we don't know how to have someone be our most treasured yucky companion, but also maintain elusiveness so that they will wonder about us enough to see whether they want to have sex with us again.

[Caroline]

Right. And you so often see stories about couples who have lost the mystery, lost the mystique, had an affair, Shrek and Fiona. That's not gonna happen.

[Jen]

I think that's why. I mean, we were two bottles of wine in when we got to Shrek2 last night, but we got weirdly tearful.

[Caroline]

Oh, so emotional.

[Jen]

Hungry. Watching them. Watching them at the very beginning of Shrek 2 on their honeymoon to Accidentally in Love by the Counting Crows. And we were just, like, weirdly teary, and we were like, they're just so happy together.

[Caroline]

This is so good. That's kind of what you aspire to.

[Jen]

Yeah. There are, like. There are very few movies that are about happily married couples.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Jen]

And certainly no children's movies.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Jen]

But Shrek 2 is like a movie about a happily married couple. And the only thing that goes wrong in their relationship is there they try and change to make the other one even happier.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Also they meet the parents.

[Jen]

Also meeting parents, which is a whole thing. It's very rooted. Trek 2. It's a very good film.

[Caroline]

It is very good. And again, I think I was asleep for much of it last night, but.

[Jen]

Yeah, you were in and out.

[Caroline]

I was. I was dozing off. You know, I've seen it before.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

But I think you. And, you know, obviously, we write notes when we watch films, if you can believe it. We do actually have some really seeing behind the scenes behind the scenes here because, you know, we make sure we know, we remember the things we said. But you said to me yesterday, you were like. You turned to me and you gripped my hand and you went, this is one of cinema's great love stories. And I was like, yeah, it is.

[Jen]

It really.

[Caroline]

And I think when we. When we finished watching it, in fact, you know the way Netflix likes to tell you what you should watch next.

[Jen]

Yes.

[Caroline]

You know, if you enjoyed this, you would. You would like. And it just went Pride and Prejudice. And I thought that was so perfect.

[Jen]

If you like Shrek, you'll love. You'll love this Pride and Prejudice, this.

[Caroline]

Regency drama, this quiet, unassuming story with absolutely no bathing in poo in it.

[Jen]

That is crucially about two people who fall in love because of their worst qualities, which is being little bitches, which is proud and prejudiced, which is another branch of being. Being yucky. Just being a little bitch. Which is what Pride and Prejudice is about.

[Caroline]

Yucky of the soul.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

And I think, like, that algorithm isn't. The algorithm doesn't know why it's right, but it is right. There is a direct line from Pride and Prejudice to Shrek. There is.

[Jen]

So good.

[Caroline]

Any other highlights of this?

[Jen]

Okay, so then we have. Fiona has her whole deal where she turns into an ogre at night. We all know about that.

[Caroline]

Oh, we've got the Merry Men. Oh, Merry Men.

[Jen]

I love the Merry Men.

[Caroline]

I mean, pickup artists. That's what they are.

[Jen]

Very pickup artists.

[Caroline]

We've all met them before. We've all met them in Leicester Square. We've all been told to take our headphones off and that we might be pretty if we smiled by the Merry Men.

[Jen]

There's nothing really more often in alligator shoes.

[Caroline]

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean, there's nothing really more to say about the other fact that they're a lovely bit of comic relief in that moment.

[Jen]

I love them.

[Caroline]

You need them. You need them in what could otherwise be. Probably you could. You could almost go too far for the kids into Love Story. So the Merry Men. Excellent. And like, you know, Fiona is an ogre. Shrek doesn't know. I don't know that there's much to say. We all know the back and forth that goes on and the empty.

[Jen]

The classic. She's talking about herself and Shrek thinks she's talking about him.

[Caroline]

Which never happen in real life, I don't see. But it's nice to put it in film so often. But I think for me, the thing that I really loved again, seeing it last night for the first time in probably 10 years, is the moment when the first of. They skip to the I dos in the wedding.

[Jen]

Oh, yes, the wedding.

[Caroline]

The Princess Bride moment during the wedding where there's, you know, at this point, like, Shrek has realized he needs the help of his fairy tale friends and. And so on and so forth. The dragon is involved. Donkey and dragon are restored. They all land in the chapel, interrupt the wedding. Farquaad is just eaten. Which is the best way for.

[Jen]

Farquaad is simply eaten.

[Caroline]

Simply eating.

[Jen]

There's no moment being like, get out of here. We don't want you. Da, da, da. Never show your face like, no, he's eaten. He's dead.

[Caroline]

We killed him and he never comes back again.

[Jen]

No, no. There's no Revenge of Farquaad. He's simply eaten.

[Caroline]

He's simply eaten. And he was the exact right size to. To fit into Dragon's mouth hole.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

And that can't be a coincidence.

[Jen]

Remember when we watched Hook at the beginning of the year?

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Jen]

And it was like one of the faults of Hook was that it just. They don't know what they want to do with Captain Hook at the end.

[Caroline]

Yeah. He gets eaten in a very unconvincing way.

[Jen]

Yeah. And there's, like, a couple of moments where, like, Pan is like, I won't fight you. And then Hook is like, yeah, okay, thanks. Okay, but I'm gonna fight you. And then it's just like. Just to cleanly get rid of your villain. One fell swoop. Just. We ate him.

[Caroline]

Chomp him down. He's chomped. He's gone.

[Jen]

He's chomped.

[Caroline]

And it's the way it's done. But then Fiona, who obviously the audience and donkey have seen as her ogre self, stops Shrek from kissing her before the sun sets because she wants him to see this other side of her and to see everything that she is. And what's so beautiful, I think, is that she trusts him. She knows, even though he has never seen her as an ogre, a thing that other people find scary and ugly and horrifying, that she knows that he will see that and find it to be true. And I think that's a very moving moment.

[Jen]

It remains moving.

[Caroline]

It remains moving even after all these years that you just see her. She says, like, oh, there's something I wanted to show you. And then she turns into an ogre, and he just thinks she's hot.

[Jen]

And that lovely Scottish voice.

[Caroline]

It's that lovely Scottish voice.

[Jen]

You are beautiful. Who? Like Mike Myers as a Scotsman. My God.

[Caroline]

I mean, the only other time I can think of it is when he played Fat Bastard in the Austin Powers movie, which is a very different Scottish accent. But somehow he managed to keep them two very separate. He's a talented man.

[Jen]

Very talented. Not given enough opportunities these days, I think.

[Caroline]

What's he been in?

[Jen]

Not good stuff.

[Caroline]

No.

[Jen]

Wow.

[Caroline]

And that's basically the end. And then the end is just a party. A Legend of Zelda style party.

[Jen]

I love when they just end on parties.

[Caroline]

Why don't more movies end with just a big party with the pigs breakdancing? You didn't even mention the pigs.

[Jen]

I love the pigs. I love the pigs so much. I love that even though I first saw them when I was, like, 11 years old and I had never met a gay person in my life, knowingly, I still was like, I know those pigs are gay. Those pigs are Berlin Gays.

[Caroline]

They are Berlin Gays.

[Jen]

They are K Hole gays.

[Caroline]

They are getting into Berghain, Berghem, Bergheim. I mean, you could spend hours deconstructing every single tiny bit of Shrek.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

But the main things you need to know. This is a story about two really good pals and a very healthy relationship.

[Jen]

Right. And also a dress that never goes all the way to the floor. And that really bothers me.

[Caroline]

It really fucked you off?

[Jen]

It really fucked me off that she, like her dress is neither a midi nor a maxi, but hits kind of somewhere around the ankle. If you've ever seen Drag Race, you know that Michelle Visage kicks you off the show for that.

[Caroline]

Really?

[Jen]

She hates that.

[Caroline]

Or maybe she needs to see Shrek. I guess if you're animating though, not to get really boring, but like, if it went all the way to the floor, she'd look like she had no legs, no feet probably.

[Jen]

I'm sure there's good reasons. It just bothered me.

[Caroline]

It's good. I feel like there are a lot of things about the CGI in this film that bother me. And her dress is among the least of them. It's mostly the uncanny Valley humanoids that we meet throughout.

[Jen]

All the people who aren't like named characters are horrible to look at. There is certain aspects of PlayStation 1.

[Caroline]

Yes. Oh, yeah, you're going later than me. I went for N64, but I suppose they'd have more like corners on their faces if that were the case, you.

[Jen]

Know, Shrek reminds me of. So recently, Gavin went to a stag do where he didn't know that many people and he got so drunk that he sort of fell asleep for a bit. You're in the middle of like a.

[Caroline]

Rented villa where I can fully imagine.

[Jen]

We'Re all drinking until 3am in gaff. Falls asleep mid conversation. And then he just sort of woke up in the middle of a thought. He said to this room full of men he barely knew. He said, if King Kong were a normal sized monkey, girls would still like him because he has something about him. I only learned this when we were at the wedding that this tag do was adjointed to and someone came up to me being like, I will never forget that as long as I live, that if King Kong were a normal sized monkey, girls would still like him because he has something about him.

[Caroline]

Such a failure to understand King Kong and yet somehow he's right.

[Jen]

But you know what it made me? Shrek makes me think of if Shrek were just a normal guy. Girls would still like him because he's got something about him.

[Caroline]

And honestly, Shrek 2 proves it.

[Jen]

I know this is a gross thing to say, but when Shrek is shirtless, I'm like, look at that back, right?

[Caroline]

And his, like, hairy cheers packs.

[Jen]

His little leather vest.

[Caroline]

His. His little leather vest. So chic.

[Jen]

All right, I think that's it.

[Caroline]

This has been such a treat.

[Jen]

Really has.

[Caroline]

Such a treat. A treat. Almost as much as a load of flies wrapped in cobwebs eaten off his stick.

[Jen]

Very good, very good.

[Caroline]

Very, very good.

[Jen]

Very good, very good. Bye, everyone. Hi, guys. It's Hannah from Giggly Squad. With summer around the corner, I wanted.

[Caroline]

To tell you guys how I'm staying comfy and stylish.

[Jen]

Lululemon is my secret weapon. There are plenty of copycats out there, but nothing compares to the Lululemon fabrics and fit. I've literally had my pair of lul leggings since college, and I'm out of college. I know I don't look it, but I am. The quality is next level.

[Caroline]

I especially love the Lululemon Align collection.

[Jen]

It's made with this weightless, buttery, soft nulu fabric that feels like next to nothing. It's so soft.

[Caroline]

Whether you're in Align pants, shorts, a bra, tank, skirt, a dress, you get.

[Jen]

Non stop flexibility in every direction so you can stretch the summer limits. Align even wicks sweat.

[Caroline]

And as a sweaty girl, I love this.

[Jen]

You know it's going to be my best friend when I play tennis this summer. Shop the Align collection [e-mail] or your nearest Lululemon store.