With quite a bit of adult humour on board, you really do have to wonder who SHREK was aimed at. I guess you could say the "real" reason animated films are laced with a few saucy jokes and the likes, are so as the adults who are dragged along to these films by their kids don’t fall asleep.
Whatever the reason, the naughty moments in this film scored a bullseye and added to an already great little film. I mean, any film that opens with an animated character icons slave trade wins in my books :)

Shrek (the voice of Mike Myers) is almost the most unlikely of animated characters you’d think would deserve his own movie. For one he’s an ogre, and as a result a total outcast, he’s big, green, ugly, has smelly breath. It’s not until a talking donkey (Eddie Murphy who simply steals the show) named Donkey arrives onto the scene that you get to see who and what Shrek is really all about and pretty soon you’re taken in by both very lovable characters. When Lord Farquaad (3^rd Rocks John Lithgow) dumps ALL the fairy tales creatures he’s captures onto Shrek’s Land.  So Shrek and Donkey head for Duloc to get Shrek’s land back.

After a medieval style WWF sequence, Lord Farquaad makes a deal with Shrek to Rescue a Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from a castle (guarded by a fire breathing dragon) and then he’ll give him his land back.

So Shrek and Donkey head off to rescue the princess....and they do (but of course there’s more to it then that :)

So to cut a long fairytale story short, Princess Fiona is under the impression that she is to marry her rescuer, she finds out it’s Shrek, BUT Lord Farquaad is the one who wants to marry her, so Shrek, Donkey and Princess Fiona make they way back to Duloc, and mayhem ensues.

The irony of all this is, that if Dreamworks had opted for multiple "international versions" with less than the FOUR 448kbps Dolby 5.1 tracks on these discs, AND even then decided to include a half bitrate DTS 5.1 track there would have actually been more room for the video stream, which, given what we ended up, would have greatly benefited!

By no means is Shrek a bad looking transfer, BUT at the end of the day, Toy Story 2 simply leaves it for dead.

So what is actually wrong with SHREK I hear you ask? (as you begin carving up your old Buena Vista Flipper DVDs into throwable Ninja Stars :) well, 2 things stick out. 1 is the several instances of MPEG artifacting, and the other, soft looking images throughout.(Given the "cleanliness" of this digitally sources image, there is absolutely no chance of grime, grain or any other filmic nasties for that matter, which could impair the picture in any way)

The most obvious example of MPEG artifacting came be found during chapter 10 where Shrek and Donkey are looking up into the stars. The skyline hunts like crazy, which is the result of too much compression resulting in MPEG artifacting :(

As for soft imagery, I am inclined to believe that this is also the result of too much compression (given the movie is made in the digital realm it really makes no sense to soften the image in this manner, and so inconsistently at that). Amongst some stunningly sharp and highly detailed sequences are moments of degraded images. In all fairness these moments are by no means ghastly to look at, but given what CAN be seen as reference quality moments on this DVD (of which there are some gorgeous shots), it just makes it even more obvious when these less than stellar moments show up (Princess Fiona on her bed for one example).

On the plus side of this transfer, colours look absolutely gorgeous with a terrific colour palette on offer. Generally speaking, the images looks incredibly 3 dimensional with a frighteningly high amount of instances that you would swear are real location shots, not CGI. (Kudos for P.D.I for their achievement in this area)

SHREK has quite a lot of goodies on offer, (though we’ve been stripped of a few over the USA release)

What we do get is the following :-

• Audio Commentary – Directors Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jensen, and Producer Aron Warner). I call this a "nice" commentary. I liked listening to it, but at the end of the day it didn’t have all that much substance., still I’m glad it has been included (but wouldn’t one with Mike, Eddie and Cameron have been really cool??! :)
• SHREK Revoice Studio – now THIS is a DVD feature! and THIS puts EVERY OTHER DVD-ROM feature to shame!!!
  all I can say is kudos to dreamworks for offering something that ever single person I have shown this to has absolutely loved playing with. The revoice studio on the DVD-ROM side of things offers 12 sequences from the movie which YOU can revoice. With a microphone in hand you speak the lines of each character on screen as each word is highlighted (think karaoke) and once you’ve done the line, the REVOICE program takes your words and syncs them up to the lip action on screen using an ADR utility. Each "revoicing" can contain multiple recordings which are permanently stored on your Hard Drive.
  Once you’ve finished the recordings, you can play the sequence back in a FULL SCREEN on your PC with YOUR audio in place of the characters. Trust me, you can spend HOURS playing this.
  One little tip. When recording your lines, be sure to fully pronounce the words as the way this ADR sync thingy seems to work is based on the syllables. (you do get it after a lot of practice). OH and be sure to turn OFF your speaker volume as you record your lines otherwise it’ll echo your lines :))
• Interactive Games - Character Morph (you get to mix bits and pieces together from all the main characters), Decorate the Gingerbread man....(i'm still trying to work out what this one is suppose to achieve), Trivia Game (was it me or was the lack of a payoff really offputting?)
• The Tech of Shrek (featurette) great little 22 minute featurette on the CGI work, etc required to create the moofy
• Animation Interviews "Meet the Press" a few minutes worth of interviews WITH the on-screen characters....nice touch
• Production Notes
• International Dubbing Featurette a quick look at the dubbing of SHREK into other languages (2 minutes)
• SHREK in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party  if you thought the closing credits of the film where great then this compilation of songs snippets will also put a smile on your face.  (especially "donkey's song).  presented in 16x9 with Dolby 5.1 sound
• Cast and Crew Bios
  
  BTW there is NO Theatrical trailer on this DVD......