Shrek
dir. Andrew Adamson, Victoria Jenson
Opens Fri May 18 at various theaters.

My first reaction to Shrek was a familiar surge of that old fear and loathing: What fragment of my childhood was being forever corrupted this time?

Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) is the name of an ogre who lives by himself in a swamp; he takes great pride in his job, which mainly consists of being nasty at all times to all things. After he sends one particular batch of terrified knights packing, his swamp is overrun by the entire cast of traditional Western fairy tales, from Pinocchio to Aesop's talking donkey (Eddie Murphy). He finds the local lord, one Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow), and demands his swamp back, but gets hoodwinked into rescuing a princess (Cameron Diaz) instead.

Like all modern films for the young and impressionable, Shrek is as much a feature-length advertisement as it is a movie. Hackles raise from the opening strains of Smash Mouth's "All-Star" through a host of gratuitous references to current films, including The Matrix, Gladiator, Babe, and a dozen others. These elements, which are meant to charm, are naturally the most grating to watch.

But Shrek is also fun, for two main reasons. First, and most pertinent: no singing. The filmmakers exclude the florid musical dreck that ruins every animated movie, and for that I was grateful. Second, and most personal: I realized, midway in, that Shrek was the fulfillment of a dream I'd forgotten I ever harbored. Did you ever read fantasy books? The last thing I expected to feel was a burst of nostalgia, but it was undeniable: Shrek got under my skin not because it's so modern, but because it's a tribute to an anachronistic fantasy sub-genre of the '70s and early '80s. I believe they were sort of collectively known as "fractured fairy tales"--renditions of classic fables distinguished by a tone of sassy, subversive reinterpretation (Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures series would be a good example). Shrek's digital animation was like watching those books' lushly airbrushed covers leap into life, which, once upon a time, was all I wanted in the whole world.