The Internet Is Freaking Out That One Person Wrote a Mean Thing About Shrek
Today is the holiest of days for fans of ogres and Smash Mouth. It is the 20th anniversary of the release of Shrek, the impossibly popular animated franchise starring Mike Myers as a lovably cantankerous ogre who goes on a quest to save his swamp by rescuing a princess. The film, the first megahit from DreamWorks Animation, spawned a massive multimedia franchise of movies, spinoffs, games, shorts, toys, theme park attractions, and even a Broadway show. (Just because he’s an ogre, doesn’t mean he can’t dance, dude.)
Not everyone is celebrating this grand and glorious anniversary of cinema, however. The Guardian’s 20th anniversary retrospective piece on the film, by film critic Scott Tobias, is not exactly a heartfelt tribute to a beloved classic. In fact, it’s sort of the opposite of that. The headline calls it “an unfunny and overrated low for blockbuster animation” — and that’s one of the nicer things he says about Shrek.
Tobias — a former boss of mine at The Dissolve (RIP) — also calls Shrek “an all-ages film that’s somehow more crude and juvenile in its appeals to adults than children” with a “referential style looks resolutely slow and unhip next to the whirring pop Cuisinarts of Lord and Miller productions like The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” So... I don’t think he liked it?
His piece has only been up for a couple hours, but in that short amount of time, the story has already been shared almost 3,500 times on Twitter alone. Most of those who’ve shared the piece are as unhappy with its writer as its writer is with Shrek. Here is just a brief sampling of some of the angriest responses — keeping in mind I can’t print the actual angriest responses (like, say, this one or this one or this one) because they’re full of profanity (about someone not liking Shrek, mind you):
It just goes to show: You can write almost anything on the internet — except one bad thing about Shrek. Twitter will not allow it! Guys, I think I like Shrek (slightly) more than The Guardian, but is it really worth threatening to imprison someone over? I would suggest to you that it is not.
If you would like to watch Shrek in protest of one person not liking this unimpeachable classic of cinema — clearly the second greatest film ever made after Citizen Kane — it is currently available on Hulu.
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