For Fans of Shrek

The original Puss in Boots was a cheerful diversion. Its 2022 sequel is something else entirely: a film about mortality, ego, and the cost of burning through second chances that also happens to be the most visually inventive DreamWorks has ever looked. The decision to render the action sequences in a stylized, high-contrast storybook mode gives The Last Wish an aesthetic identity the main Shrek films never quite locked in. It earned the praise.

Shrek (2001) was not simply mocking Disney for sport. It had a specific argument: that the idea of the perfect, beautiful, deserving hero was itself the villain. Lord Farquaard is a satire of a certain kind of self-appointed taste-maker who decides what stories are worth telling and who gets to live in the nice part of the kingdom. That precision is why the jokes don't feel like a collection of references but like a coherent film. Twenty-plus years on, that argument has only become more useful.

Shrek the Musical (2008) arrived at a strange moment: the franchise was peaking commercially and the stage adaptation felt like a cash extension. But the show, with its David Lindsay-Abaire book and Jeanine Tesori score, found something the later films were losing: genuine warmth without the winking. The cast album rewards revisiting. The filmed version captures enough of the staging to be worthwhile as a standalone watch.