More sophisticated, inventive and perhaps more satisfying, but not necessarily better than the original.
I was more at ease with Mike Myers' Scottish accent, and so it seems was he. Murphy and Diaz have also grown into their vocal parts, though hers comes with fewer dramatic possibilities than last time round.
There's still a relative lack of expressiveness in Dreamworks' characters compared to Pixar's in spite of the upgrade here to SEGA-style, near-lifelike human figures. And while there's certainly enormous beauty, depth and detail in all the hyperreal scenery, I couldn't help reflecting that there's not that much to prevent this same story being told in a live-action remake. In contrast films like The Incredibles and Team America explored areas where flesh and blood thesps cannot, and perhaps should not, go.
The game of using a fanatasy world to satirise the mores of modern life (e.g. Far Far Away as the fairytale LA, complete with its own Joan Rivers) is also getting a bit stale, especially after Shark Tale. It's a comic conceit that has never really been done better than in the Asterix books, though The Flinstones (TV not films) deserves an honourable mention.
The donkey cracks me up.
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