Shrek at 20: an unfunny and overrated low for blockbuster animation

The fairytale comedy was a hit with critics and audiences but its toilet humour, glibness and shoddy animation mark it out as a misfire

Shrek has an outhouse with a working toilet.

It is not part of the film's cynical brand of irreverence" that an ogre's latrine is supported by modern plumbing. And it's certainly not consistent with the hygiene of a swamp-dwelling beast who bathes in mud, brushes his teeth in slime and boasts of a killer weed rat stew. But after our lime-green hero literally wipes his ass with a fairytale ending, it was apparently decided that the film needed that emphatic flushing sound before the Smash Mouth single All Star kicked in and the introductory montage could commence.