Hey folks, Harry here and from the sound of this report Captain Courageous saw an EXTREMELY early work of production. The film is, I believe at least a year away from completion... or so I think. And from the sound of the stuff the good captain saw.... Dreamworks is experimenting to see how to play this stuff. The whole villain side of the story sounds fascinating.... can't wait to see how that comes across, but the Myers stuff sounds a bit uninspired. Hopefully Mike will find the right muse for the character at some point on the road for this film. Expect major changes between the film described below and what hits theaters eventually.... Check it out.... (Btw... I believe this film has been known as Shrek for quite some time. Given that the film inevitably wouldn't contain titles or end credits, it is reasonable to believe that Captain Courageous' ear heard SKREG, instead of the name of everyone's favorite vampire actor!)
Call me Captain Courageous !!
Ahoy..Mr Captain Knowles of the SS AICN...
I had a recent opportunity to see some of Dreamwork's new CGI animated production called SKREG. It falls in the category of "fractured fary tale" and it has some good stuff worth mentioning. It was far sillier than Princess Bride but still had a decent gaffaw at times. I'll be blunt and say right out that I LOVE animated movies...in the last few years...I liked but didn't drool over Bugs Life, Antz or any CGI animated movie other than Toy Story 1 and 2. Skreg has the potential of being way better than Antz and I'll tell ya why. It's out to make fun of Disney's strangle hold on the fairy tale world. What I saw was a mostly unfinished animation with a great deal of quick story board art used to fill in areas of the script with a VERY rough sound track, more about that in a bit. Sadly it's PG, as all animated films made in North America are doomed to follow to compete with Disney.
No ground breaking formula as far as voice talent and story goes...Skreg is about a chunky green Ogre named ...what else...Skreg. The voice talent is by Mike Myers. Now I am a HUGE fan of Mike's shtick for many years. So it pains me to see nothing different or new from him. To be fair, this is where that rough sound track comes into play....Myers is using his Fat Bastard/ Scot Dad from So I Married An Axe Murderer. It comes in and out as they are testing to see how thick an accent to make it. It's just not funny this time out as the script isn't geared to make his character that great on the laugh-o-meter. That was a big disappointment to see. The next wasted talent...er...character is a Little Ass (A donkey...what were ya thinking??) voiced by Eddie Murphy. For obvious reasons Murphy has more to work with as the side kick ass who follows Skreg so he won't get his ass kicked in this fairy tale land. Murphy is far funnier than his stint on Mulan...basically he's an ass kisser (last ass pun...so relax) but with some good one liners. Cameron Diaz plays a beautiful princess who can handle herself (not much screen time in the 30 + minutes I saw so I can't say if she sucks or not) and John Lithgow plays the evil Prince who has banished all fairy tale creatures to the farthest corners of the woods. Lithgow has some of the best stuff I've seen from a bad guy in a animated movie in a while. He's an evil prince with a Napoleon complex. A great big angry head with feet.
Where the film f-i-n-a-l-l-y took off for me was how classically Warner Bros.-ish was Lithgow's interaction with the fairy tale creatures. In one scene Lithgow's prince walks into his torture chamber with dark hooded henchmen dunking a little gingerbread man heads first in a glass of milk...while said gingerbread screams ..."EAT ME!!!" Under interrogation with the helpless cookie Lithgow asks..."Have you seen...the MUFFIN MAN?!?!"...gingerbread man retorts..."The Muffin Man?"...."YES !! The Muffin Man!!" This seems to be the the where the laughs are found with the Evil Prince forcing his will against the Mirror Mirror On The Wall, The Three Blind Mice and of course....The Seven Dwarves.
If you liked the classic Warner Brothers cartoons I think this might be more to your liking than say that gawd awful Space Jam, as it tries to push the PG as far as it goes for some adult humor. Skreg's a mix bag of boring same old with a sharp stick poked into Ol' Uncle Walt's eye. I got a few laughs on the back end of my short preview....a much needed good sign. Far from perfect but it didn't suck.
Oh...it's time to feed the crew...hmmm...Red Lobster's having an all you can eat shrimp platter fest. This is Captian Couragous settin' sail...burp.
