The Five Uses of Smash Mouth’s “All Star” In Movies

While Smash Mouth had only moderate successes, perhaps one of their biggest hits of their entire career came with the song “All Star”. The song would find a lot of applications throughout different mediums, but certainly found its stride with film. Some might even say that it was overused on the silver screen, but that doesn’t stop any of us from having our favorite scenes that feature this hit song from the rock/pop band. Below you will find the top 5 uses of this song in film:

1. Shrek   

Perhaps one of the most famous uses of this song in a film would be the opening sequence of the first movie of the Shrek franchise. This is where you are meeting Shrek through the opening credits, and seeing what the typical life of an ogre who lives in a swamp is actually like. There are a lot of quick looks at the personality of the character as well, offering you a taste of what is to come from the entire movie.

2. Rat Race

This was always an interesting premise to a film, especially when you consider the manipulative nature of Donald P. Sinclair in the film. He chooses 6 people and enters them into a race across the country for the opportunity to get two million dollars in cold hard cash. Somewhere along the way, the teams realize that the billionaire friends of Sinclair stand to gain the most from this race, and decide to turn the tides for a much larger payout. “All Star” is performed by the original band Smash Mouth in the closing sequence of the film where money is being raised (and lost by Sinclair). 

3. Digimon The Movie   

The song “All Star” Is often deemed a peculiar choice for the funny dance sequence that is found in the official Digimon movie. During the closing of the film, there is a scene in which Wendigomon is dancing and grunting, showing off a playfulness to the audience. While this certainly has his owner a little more confused than anything, it doesn’t change that this is just a highly amusing scene to close out the film and get the audience laughing again. 

4. Mystery Men 

Mystery Men was probably better classified as a cult comedy because there were only a handful of people that really, really think the movie was great. Smash Mouth used clips from the movie to be featured throughout the official music video for their song “All Star”, and the song was featured as part of the official movie soundtrack for the film itself. Here you see the official music video, complete with some cleverly placed clips from Mystery Men.    

5. Shrek The 3rd   

If you have seen the entire franchise, you might have noticed how the Shrek films tend to reference each other from time to time, lending to the full saga of the story and not just the individual problems for each movie. One of the more commonly overlooked referenced to the first film can be found in the third installment, where Shrek is looking for Artie to take back to the kingdom to be its king. When he enters a gymnasium during a pep rally, the band can be heard playing the song “All Star”.