Anyone else "catching up" on their childhoods now?

Weird thing about me-I too watched Shrek when I was much, much younger (though I wasn't like 5 or anything LOL) and "didn't" really get it either. It was on subsequent rewatches that I grew to like it. I think that Lindsay Ellis had a point in her own criticism of the film (paraphrased): "I just don't like it that much. It feels almost TOO bitter. TOO jaded. TOO cynical. It's comes from just SUCH a place of hate. And before you say no one did anything like this before, THEY did, in prior parodies and satires." Granted, Shrek being a MAJOR film release to do this was something of a big thing. And I do like that it doesn't try to copy the whole Disney Renaissance formula, and that the characters are more "adult" and feel more adult in a sense. Can be riskier for a children's film! But regardless I think Ellis shares a decent amount of my own thoughts here. 

Like you said, since sadly meta has been so overrelied on recently, it can be hard to go back and rewatch stuff like Shrek 1. Meta that was fresh (or fresher) at the time isn't anymore, not to mention how overly memed and referenced Shrek is means that you have already seen the equivalent of a 10 minute movie trailer by the time you rewatch it as an adult. 

Still enough good moments and aspects for me to enjoy rewatching though

Yeah i've disagreed with Lindsay on some stuff(mainly Transformers and the DCEU) but she's not wrong here, there definitely is an air of spite to Shrek and seeing Katzenberg's epic fails after he left Dreamworks(Quibi anyone? LOL)it makes me question whether every movie he was ever involved with was good in spite of him and not because of him.

Katzenberg also helped make the Black Friday reel for Toy Story. And we all know how that went.

They weren't able to get cable in a rural area, the VERY REASON CABLE EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE!? Jeez, cable really did stray far away from its original purpose too much.

Now for the final entry in my "movies-I-saw-tons-of-ads-for-as-a-kid-but-never-got-around-to-watching-til-now" category-the first movie ever based on a Disney attraction-The Country Bears. Honestly better then i expected it to be but certainly not without issues. For starters the film seems confused about it's own target audience as kids seeing this likely aren't going to care about the numerous cameos from famous music artists(and some not-so-famous ones like one-hit-wonder Jennifer Paige who shows up as a waiter in a diner to do a musical number in a sequence very reminiscent of Blues Brothers and Krystal Harris-best known for "Supergirl" from Princess Diaries)or all of the extended musical numbers(some of which like "The Kid in You" and "Kick it Into Gear" feel almost like a dry-run for High School Musical)and adults likely aren't going to enjoy the dopey subplot about the two bumbling keystone cops(named "Hamm" and "Cheets", get it?  there's also a stupid running gag about one having a fake mustache)chasing after the titular band(they think the bears kidnapped the main family's son "Beary" despite ample evidence to the contrary)and getting into dumb slapstick along the way(including an overlong and not very funny sequence of them getting tossed around in a car wash, they even get their own post-credits scene FFS)so on one hand i'm not a bit surprised that the film wasn't much of a hit with critics or at the box-office. On the other hand the musical numbers are actually mostly pretty solid and catchy enough and the Bears(courtesy of Jim Henson's Creature Shop)themselves look convincing enough(not quite on the level of the turtles in the first live-action TMNT film but decent enough)and are voice acted competently enough and aren't too bad as characters, it's the human characters where the film stumbles somewhat as well as certain details about this universe that aren't really explained. 

For the human characters the film kinda drops the ball, especially with Beary's brother Dex (who seems to have an irrational dislike of Beary for a bit which then suddenly does a 180 with no real character development to speak of, there's also a dumb running gag where nobody else but Dex seems to acknowledge the fact that Beary is a bear). Also we don't know much about Beary himself which makes it difficult to get invested in his "finding himself" journey(Dex mentions his parents "found him" in the woods but we don't know anything about Beary's real parents or how exactly he was found, it just kind of gets glossed over)it feels like two different movies awkwardly joined together-a lonely kid trying to find himself and a goofy musical road comedy about a band getting back together to save a historic location. Also like Roger Ebert pointed out in his review there's a number of things about this world that aren't explained, aside from the whole "do non anthropomorphic bears also exist in this world?" question there's also the matter of honey, as one of the bears is shown to have a honey addiction and hanging out mostly at a bar that serves honey(in this universe honey is apparently treated like alcohol which opens up all kinds of questions that the film seems to have no interest in addressing). Then there's the evil banker Reed Thimple played in yet another scenery-chewing performance by Christopher Walken(who admittedly does have a bizarre twist to him I didn't see coming)who is entertaining enough but feels like he belongs in a different movie(M.C. Gainey also shows up as a roadie and feels pretty wasted overall). As characters the titular bears are alright but should've been explored more, the film repeatedly alludes to why they broke up but never really explains it in detail which makes it hard to get invested in any of the drama between the characters relating to it(speaking of which there's another fairly pointless human character-the bears former manager Rip who definitely feels like he was meant to have a bigger role originally as there's hints and implications that he was somewhat responsible for causing the band to break up but the film just kind of glosses over it).

So overall it's an OK movie in the moment but not one you're too likely to remember much after the credits roll. Also I have to say it was a rather bizarre choice to have Disney's first film based on an attraction to be based on one that's a mostly static experience as opposed to say a moving experience(seriously where's the films based on Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad?). Probably for the best I didn't see this as a kid as like with Gordy I probably would've found myself bored during all of the musical numbers.

Can't wait for Nostalgia Critic to review this thing one of these days.

It's really sad knowing that the original goal for cable was just tossed onto the wayside after about 5-6 years of its existence for the most part. Knowing that the people who needed cable the most were left behind in the dust is a horrific sight, but an unsurprising one. It's like how Danger Rangers, a PBS animated series has never been seen in a long while & isn't available in an official manner outside of long-out-of-print DVDs, even though it was about protection & safety, meaning that we need that show more than ever right now. They're not of the same amount of impact, but still.