Since “Shrek” graced the big screen in the early aughts, its cultural impact has dominated pop culture, with new memes and trends involving the franchise appearing every year. With the announcement of the franchise’s fifth movie this past summer, I thought it would be cool if I could see the national tour of “Shrek the Musical.”
The musical is no different in impact than the movie, with this summer showing us how generational “Shrek” media truly is. Over the summer, the song “I Know It’s Today” from the musical was a trend for singers to showcase their talents by recreating the 3-part harmony throughout the song. Another example is the song from the first “Shrek” movie “I’m a Believer”, which also went viral this summer, as people were reacting to Eddie Murphy’s solo sounding amazing and “going insanely hard.”
Being able to see “Shrek the Musical” on stage brought me back to my middle school obsession—when I was part of my school’s production of “Shrek the Musical Jr.” The production was amazing! The cast was hilarious, with the theater roaring at every joke, the production was very cool, especially for a smaller stage, and the energy was high! My friend Sam, and I both loved Donkey, played by Naphtali Yaakov Curry. The wittily written lines combined with Curry’s tone of voice in his delivery of the lines really stuck out to us. With how popular Donkey’s character is in the movie as well as the musical, it is a shock to no one that we, as audience members, loved him the most.
In terms of pop culture, “Shrek” is probably one of the biggest movies and characters that comes to and remains in memory. I severely doubt that anyone under the age of 60 hasn’t heard of Shrek before. This pop culture prominence just proves how important writers, producers, and directors are to making a movie, animated or not. I think the reasons why the “Shrek” franchise has had a major impact on pop culture are numerous. Included among these reasons are the number of references to other pop culture moments, the number of well-known songs in the soundtrack, and the script itself, where the writers were able to sneak in some jokes that young kids wouldn’t know. These iconic elements of “Shrek” were the formula for making animated movies in the 2000s. That is why people continuously go back to the “Shrek” franchise because it brings up feelings of nostalgia for so many.
I cannot wait until the new “Shrek” movie comes out. I think it will be almost as big as “Barbie” was in the summer of 2023, because “Shrek” has so many avid fans. I also hope that one day “Shrek the Musical” will make its way back to Broadway, so many more people can see this popular movie turned into a musical, but also so people can enjoy it as much as Sam and I did.
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