The not-so-jolly green giant returns in this television Christmas special. When he promises his new family that he’ll provide them a festive family Christmas, Shrek has to learn the meaning of Christmas. However, his noisy pals show up and to drive him to be a Grinch.
Tis the Season and Shrek (Mike Myers), Fiona (Cameron Diaz), and the baby ogre triplets want to celebrate it. Donkey (Eddie Murphy) makes Shrek promise Fiona a Christmas to remember, but Shrek really doesn’t know how to celebrate Christmas. A quick trip to ye olde bookshoppe produces the book Christmas for Village Idiots and Shrek’s off to decorate the house and make his family a holiday.
However, his plans of a quiet family gathering are quashed when Donkey noisily arrives with the entire gang and his plans are ruined. He tries to make the best of it by telling “The Night before Christmas,” but each character has their own version of the tale. Donkey’s sounds like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade (done in the extreme Donkey way), Gingy (Conrad Vernon) tells of the fears of all cookies on Christmas Eve, and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) starts to tell of a Spanish Christmas when he’s distracted.
Since he was hoping for a quiet night at home with the family, Shrek gets frustrated and kicks everyone out of the house and this also causes Fiona to pack up the kids and leave as well. Now Shrek has to find a way to fix Christmas after all.
I’ll give Shrek the Halls the advantage over Shrek the Third. It’s either that I’m a sucker for holiday specials or that the compact nature of this 22 minute holiday adventure in the land of far, far away served it better than the feature length film. What’s also fantastic is that there’s plenty of time for each character to have a little time in the spotlight and also that the original vocal cast returns.
My favorite was always Puss in Boots and he is in the special just not much, however his appearances are hilarious. Donkey tends to grate and that’s part of his character, but he gets to grate in a mad holiday fashion this time around. Now since the story is short there are a lot of things packed in to the running time and it’s a bit crowded (four writers toiled on the short special).
I still liked it better than the third sequel, but it will appeal to the more youthful crowd the best but there’s still plenty of funny to go around to the old ‘uns.
Shrek the Halls is presented both in fullscreen and anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include Madagascar penguin themed versions of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” (4 minutes) and “Deck the Halls” (2 minutes).
Some of the clips are shoehorned into the tune, for example “three flopping fish” in Twelve days really has four fish in the picture. You also get “Gingy’s Dunking Game” and the Dreamwork’s Animation video Jukebox. The DVD-ROM side of things features a playable demo of Shrek’s Carnival Craze. There’s also a preview for Madagascar 2.
It may not be on the level of Charlie Brown or the Grinch, but it is a fun holiday special in the tradition of those classic TV specials. He may not be the typical jolly old elf but Shrek does offer some yuletide laughs that the whole family can enjoy.
Shrek the Halls is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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