In "Shrek the Third," Cameron Diaz's ogre bride shares tea time with the fairy-tale world's fairest princesses -- Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel.
With Diaz's plump Fiona expecting a litter of tiny ogres with hubby Shrek, her old princess pals throw her a baby shower in the animated sequel that opens May 18. True to the Shrek world, these are not the well-behaved princesses of classic children's stories.
Snow White (voiced by Amy Poehler) is a haughty queen bee, Cinderella (Amy Sedaris) is an obsessive clean freak and Sleeping Beauty (Cheri Oteri) is a narcoleptic who's constantly nodding off. Rapunzel (Maya Rudolph) looks down on her royal cousins as if from a high tower and hides a terrible secret about her glorious hair.
After Prince Charming leads a coup, Fiona must teach her pampered friends -- whose natural inclination is to assume passive positions and wait to be rescued -- how to stand up for themselves.
Diaz and her princess posse sat down with The Associated Press to share their thoughts on the "Shrek" films, their favorite animated tales and why these modern damsels don't sit around waiting for men to rescue them.
Q: What are your favorite animated films? And you can't say one of the "Shrek" movies.
POEHLER: Well, we can say whatever we want, sir. You may not write about it, but I can say it!
SEDARIS: I always liked Mr. Magoo. I liked his eyes, and whenever I have allergies I feel like him. I always liked how swollen his eyes were, slammed shut, and he couldn't see. That Christmas movie of his is really good.
POEHLER: I have a really obscure movie I love. It's not animated, but live-action with puppets. Did anyone ever see "Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas"? It's a Jim Henson Christmas movie with puppets, but they ice-skate and they're on water and in rowboats. It's so good. That's an old chestnut nobody knows about, and you won't write about it.
OTERI: I remember "The Incredible Mr. Limpet." It combined live action with animation, and I thought that was crazy! Is it a cartoon? Is it a movie? I don't know! But I think there was such an appreciation with any of the Disney cartoons, because they only came on once a year. You didn't have the video and DVD we have. I always stayed up for those cartoons that came on once a year. Or even like "The Ten Commandments." (slipping into an impersonation of nasally Edgar G. Robinson) "Where's your messiah now, Moses?" I used to go around the house and imitate Edward G. Robinson.
SEDARIS: I loved all the Disney movies. I saw "Snow White" not too long ago. It's just beautiful.
RUDOLPH: Did you have a party? Did you have people over to watch it?
SEDARIS: Actually, no. I watched it by myself.
DIAZ: The animated film that would come on television that I could not wait to see, and it was a family event, was "The Hobbit."
RUDOLPH: I remember going to see "Bambi" in the theater, and then Bambi's mom dies, and I went, "What? Why is that in a kid's movie?" If I had to show that to my daughter, I think I'd wait on that maybe a little bit.
Q: This seems like a female-empowerment or princess-empowerment film. What's that say about the old fairy-tale notion of, as the princesses say, "assume the position" and wait for some man to save them?
SEDARIS: Sounds good to me now. It does.
DIAZ: The princesses' "assume the position," that comes from the old-school fairy tales that at one point were a comment on society. That's what these fairy tales are for, to recognize what the values are and how society is constructed at the period of time those stories are being told.
And current-day storytelling obviously is that. It's telling what currently we are as a society, how we perceive ourselves. I love that it's commenting on where we're at right now as women.
POEHLER: Well done. ... What's also nice is we go through this transformation, where we kind of literally rip off our feminine things to fight.
No comments:
Post a Comment