Cinema: Monstrously Good

The hero's an ogre and the princess can be almost as gross in the delightfully fractured fairy tale Shrek

Once upon a time, an ogre named Shrek lived in a mythical but nonetheless insalubrious swamp. He was green. He was overweight. He liked to take mud showers. He made candles out of his own earwax. Understandably, he led a rather lonely life. He pretended he preferred it that way.

Meantime, the local tyrant, Lord Farquaad, has been torturing the Gingerbread Man. "No, not my buttons, not my gumdrop buttons!" his brave but hapless victim piteously cries. Just why his lordship takes such violent umbrage at fairy-tale creatures is not clear. But he decrees that they all be exiled from his...

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