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Shrek 2 discharges its first fart joke — newlyweds Shrek (Mike Myers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) making bubbles in a mud bath during their honeymoon — before the opening credits roll, beating the original. The film itself makes noisome bubbles for about the first third, which consists of tiresome plot exposition — the couple must deal with the displeasure of Fiona’s royal parents (John Cleese and Julie Andrews), who are not yet aware that their daughter’s love for the ogre has turned her into one as well — and stale humor. Not even Eddie Murphy as Donkey can get off a good one, so you might spend this part of the movie reflecting on how computer animation makes humans look creepy and creepy things look human, or perhaps count the gratuitous movie references (From Here to Eternity and The Sound of Music, and many others, are tapped before we even get to the fart joke). But then Puss in Boots comes to the rescue. (Helping also is Captain Hook playing songs by Tom Waits and Nick Cave in a bar scene out of Star Wars.) Voiced with exquisite, mellifluous subtlety by Antonio Banderas, Puss is the mixture of fawning sycophancy and cold-blooded treachery that many cat lovers will recognize, but he’s blessed also with a noble soul and a redeeming sense of the absurd. He brings out the best of the rest, especially Murphy, in this tale of tolerance, deceit, true love, the nature of identity, and the intertextuality of images, a soulless synthesis culminating with a 10-story-tall rampaging gingerbread man that’s a direct but hilarious steal from Ghostbusters. The directing team of Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, and Conrad Vernon have given up all pretense of being faithful to the dark children’s book classic by the late William Steig. Nonetheless, product though it is, Shrek 2 is worth watching through the end credits, which are followed by the definitive version of "Livin’ La Vida Loca." (95 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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