Featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Julie Andrews, John Cleese

Rating: ***1/2

Not for a long time will you get to see a film that tickles your senses so effectually. Shrek 2 makes you smile giggle chortle and chuckle. Its surprising bouts of sighing romanticism where the commoner ogre-hero tries to be at his Sunday-best before his wife’s upperclass parents (shades of Raja Hindustani, yes?) also make you want to reach for your hankerchief. All this, and a lot more, in a film where the characters are all animation figures.

Virtual reality never appeared more tenable….or desirable. And for those who thought a sequel to the hugely successful Shrek in 2001 was one more take-the-money-and-ram proposals, there’s news. Shrek 2 is funnier, sassier, more savvy and enjoyable than even the first, considerably spectacular film.

The Shrek series (and I hope it’s a series, since the sequel whets the appetite for more) represents the triumph of the fairytale spirit against all odds, and all cynical readings of age-old literary/cinematic customs. It does away with the syrupy idealism of the fairytale convention but holds on to the romanticism and the “purity” of the love-emotion projected in a smooth motion of lipsmacking potion.

For those who weren’t around when Shrek first shrieked into sight …. He’s a green monster and the envy of the animation genre. On a superficial level Shrek gives us a walloping entertainer, filled with zany humour and anachronistic overtures, and packaged in an irresistible insouciance. On a subliminal level Shrek represents the triumph of physical non-beauty over scratch-level perfection. He’s a green ungainly blob of gawd-knows-what. But he’s gentle kind caring and shrewd. He’s ET without spatial affectations.

And most important of all, he speaks in the voice of Mike (Austin Powers) Myers. That helps tremendously to give the character its peculiar propensities as an animation character with “real” feelings.

In fact the performances are all pitched at a perfectly projected plateau through the voices. Whether it’s Shrek’s wife, Princess Fiona speaking in Cameron Diaz’s softly-whispering tones, or her father King Harold whose morally compromised yet finally conscientious character comes through John Cleese’s baritone, the film rocks visually through the spoken word.

Much cleverer and far smarter than a ‘children’s film’ (whatever that may be), and much more real than many romantic comedies in Hollywood and Bollywood with human characters, Shrek is a trek into fantasy-land undertaken in the spirit of a parodic pilgrimage.

The meet-the-parents format where the ogre-hero meets up with his wife’s aristocratic parents flares up into scenes of high comedy. The editing of the sequence where Shrek and his wife walk through a royal gauntlet towards her parents is amazingly astute. The dialogues are brought together in a comic contingency.

The sinister overtones, such as the transvestite bartender at the cavern where the evil fairy godmother plots to oust Shrek from Princess Fiona’s life, or the subverted selfabsorbed interpretation of the mythic Prince Charming(speaking , appropriately in the ‘lovely’ voice of Rupert Everett) symbolises the highest form of pop-art delineated in the most flamboyant shades.

The satiric spirit flows along with the quips and retorts. And then there are the characters, each a marvel of animation bubbling over with expressions of advanced anachronism. Shrek’s two companions, the donkey and the pussy-cat give the most rousing performances in the film directly linked to the fact that they speak in the voices of Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas.

The adventure story cascades into an endearingly enchanting mix of pure fun and distant enigma.

The distance that this delightful film covers from fantasy to virtual reality is so beautifully carpeted with subtle lessons on the quality of existence that we don’t even know when the joy-ride begins and ends. After Spider-Man 2, here’s another Hollywood nugget that disproves our skepticism about sequels.