Shrek rules again

"Shrek 2", has ridden on the crest of a wave of critical adoration to top the US box office charts for a second consecutive week.

Taking an estimated $73.1 million (£40 million) over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, compared with the $70 million (£38 million) grossed by "The Day After Tomorrow", the green ogre and his motor-mouth donkey companion galloped to the top of the chart.

Over the last decade the rise and rise of the full-length computer animated feature, both in terms of cinema popularity and box office performance, has accorded animated films a status which now sees new releases considered critically in the same breath as their strictly celluloid counterparts.

Disney, the undisputed king of all things animated, has in many ways proven the unwitting pioneer of the CGI-animated blockbuster epic, with classics like "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" combining traditional animation alongside early examples of computer animation, and proving that animated films have the mass-appeal to justify big budgets and marketing campaigns.

Studios like Stephen Spielberg's Dream Works, former Disney-contractor Pixar Animations and George Lucas's ILM have taken up the mantle and continued to pave the way, employing a creative mix of the artistic and technological to constantly raise the bar in CGI innovation and the creation of wholly animated blockbusters which rival the efforts of mainstream movie-makers.

The likes of "Toy Story", "Finding Nemo", "The Incredibles" and "Monsters Inc" have helped to carve out the tenets of ingenuity, creative genius and - above all - fun that are now accepted as the staple elements of production among most animated studios.

If anyone point in the last decade can be taken as evidence that CGI-animated films and the studios that produce them are now big players in the Hollywood, the crowning of the original "Shrek" with the first Oscar for an animated feature back in 2001 must be that.

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