But in this sea of media attention, one small detail seems to have gone unremarked: Has no William Steig fan noticed that "Shrek" is not Shrek? That the book on which the movie is based does not feature a sensitive hero, an incarcerated princess or a host of abused Disney characters fated for "resettlement"? That the directors have traded the subversive misanthropy of Steig's 1990 book for a Hollywood ending? That the animators jettisoned Steig's wonderfully loopy illustration style so they could join the digital race to realism? Or that the film doesn't feature a single line of Steig's crotchety dialogue? Not even Shrek's masterful ode to his blue-lipped mistress: "Your horny warts, your rosy wens/like slimy bogs and fusty fens/thrill me."

Why even call this movie "Shrek"?

The beauty of Steig's story is in Shrek's devilish enjoyment of his hideous world. When his parents kick him out of "the black hole in which he'd been hatched," Shrek, "giving off his awful fumes," sets out to do "his share of damage." Steig writes, "It delighted him to see the flowers bend aside and the trees lean away to let him go by." (Animate that.) Along the way, in exchange for a few of his "rare lice," a witch tells his fortune:

"A donkey takes you to a knight/him you conquer in a fight/Then you wed a princess who/Is even uglier than you."

He meets a peasant ("You there, varlet ... why so blithe?") and steals his dinner, then dispatches a dragon with a blast of putrid blue flame between the eyes. His darkest moment comes during a nap in which he dreams he's in a field of flowers with children frolicking around him. "Some of the children kept hugging and kissing him, and there was nothing he could do to make them stop. He woke up in a daze, babbling like a baby: 'It was only a bad dream ... a horrible dream!'"

Shrek finds his "jabbering jackass" and rides it to the castle of the repulsive princess, where a knave greets him: "Magician's mercury, plumber's lead/I smite your stupid, scabby head." With a blast of fire, Shrek overwhelms him and enters the castle, where he sees a hall of mirrors containing hundreds of appallingly hideous creatures. He regards his many selves, "full of rabid self-esteem, happier than ever to be exactly what he was."

Fortified, he meets his stunningly ugly princess, and they exchange fetid compliments. ("Oh ghastly you/With lips of blue/Your ruddy eyes/With carmine sties/enchant me.") When they marry, she wears a cloak covered in spiders and carries a cactus, and they live "happily ever after, scaring the socks off all who fell afoul of them."

Granted, Steig's 30-page bildungsroman isn't plot heavy enough to sustain a feature film -- embellishments were needed -- but that's no reason to trash the original.

Steig's story is gently menacing, unsentimental and harmlessly deviant from start to finish. The movie is winking and cynical. (What is a kindergartner to make of a gingerbread man yelling "Eat me" at a man torturing it? My daughter hated this scene for its meanness. I hated it for going over her head in the service of a bad pun.) But once the sardonicism is exhausted, "Shrek" winds up in a bog of emotion, cheapened by what came before.

While Steig's romance hinges on the lovers' mutual appreciation of their inverted values, the movie restores traditional values and, worse, tacks on a threadbare moral that Steig never inflicted on his readers: You can't judge a book by its cover. If there's one thing a Steig book will never do, it's preach. This kind of stop 'n' shop sanctimony is, to paraphrase "The Toy Brother" -- another fine Steig book -- a first-rate pain in the pants.

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