ABSTRACT
In 2002, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) presented the rst Academy Award for Best Animated Feature to Shrek (Adamson and Jenson, 2001), a computer-animated lm that offered a revisionist take on fairy tales. Loosely based on William Steig’s picture book, DreamWorks’s Shrek demonstrates a new strain of animated lm that envisions children’s cinema as an entertainment experience aimed at the whole family. Broad humor targets the children, while innuendo and allusions speak to the presumed adult audience. Pixar’s John Lasseter explained these lms’ appeal to The New York Times: “Great story, great characters-we make movies that we want to see” (qtd. in Holson, “As Animation” col. C-6). Add to that toe-tapping song-and-dance numbers lifted from the musical genre, and it is no wonder the animated feature has earned the “kind of returns that have made the Academy take respectful notice, at last, of animation” (Strassel col. A-26).
