Was hyped for Shrek Retold since the trailer was passed around on Twitter, mostly because the concept of over 200 content creators remaking a movie high in meme culture sounds amazing. It sounded like beautiful irony.
What shocked me most was Shrek Retold works as a movie on its own. It's not always great nor coherent as you'd expect for such a huge collaboration, but more often than not it works and makes for an entertaining, funny, bizarre, and weirdly heartfelt recreation. Kinda like the original Shrek (insert think emoji).
All the song covers from the original movie are great, uplifting, catchy, and fit snuggly in their place. An indie version of All Star is an immediate strong point for some truly talented musicians involved.
Animations range from (intentionally) (okay, m o s t l y) crappy to impressive in a heartbeat, which gives off a slight schizophrenic tone. This could be a problem and there are times were a few animators throw in painful, unfunny jokes to enhance Shrek's meme status but again, most are so much fun to look at, reinterpreting original scenes in creative and interesting ways. All the art styles are unique in their own weird ways.
Live action segments are the weak point here, especially a satirical vlogging scene that goes nowhere and ruins the flow. Maybe it's because of limitations compared to animation but they feel less lively. But there's still credit where credit's due: Sadworld's part is very funny and a particular scene with Donkey and Fiona is really well acted and made. There was real heart poured into an already great scene.
I'm shocked at how much I enjoyed this on a critical view. It's sincere enough to not delve too deep into tryhard meme status but the bizarre segments are mostly funny on their own, too. It comes together very well thanks to the content creators involved, and I couldn't be thankful for more.
