Shrek The Halls (DreamWorks/Paramount DVD)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: C Main Program: C+
Shrek the
halls with bails of Ogres! Fee Fey Foe Fum, La La La! Just in time to stuff your stockings and
bring holiday joy to everyone, Shrek the
Halls hits DVD shelves everywhere with a shade of green that only one
loveable Ogre could bring. The short and
to the point feature was originally broadcast on television in November of 2007
as a half hour Christmas special. The “tele-film”
features Shrek and Fiona as they are about to celebrate their first Christmas
together as a family, babies and all.
The only problem is, Ogres, Shrek in particular, do not know how to
celebrate Christmas. To help him on his
journey of Christmas enlightenment, Shrek ventures to the nearest book store
and gets a book entitled “Christmas: For Village Idiots.” At first Shrek had some real trouble,
understanding what Christmas was all about; but once his family joined in to
help with the decorating and such, things seemed to get much better. A second snag arises in the tale when all of
Shrek’s fairytale “friends” all come to join in the holiday festivities. Shrek does not enjoy the fact that all his
friends are loitering and “ruining” his Christmas; but maybe, just maybe there
is more that this Ogre has yet to learn about this thing called Christmas?
All in
all the film was cute and well played, but the pace was horrible. The events seemed to jump across the screen
wildly and there was little too no consistency.
The “tele-film” could have well been a half hour longer and would have
made it much better. All the original
voice cast returned in full steam with the scenery and site gags being as good
as ever. If the film was longer it would
have made for a better holiday classic.
The
technical features on this Ogre of a holiday tale were not outstanding, but
far, far away from bad. The picture is
presented with the option of viewing the feature in either widescreen or full
screen; both of which are extremely crisp and clean in their presentation. Dreamworks has always done an excellent job
with their image presentation, so that was no surprise here; though since the
film was set mostly at night there were times when the image was overly dark,
but a minor gripe to pick out. The sound
is a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround that projects nicely from all speakers
and seems to ‘boom’ even more when the multitude of ‘Christmas relate’ pop
songs hit the screen.
The
extras on this release seem a bit ‘slapped together’ or ‘rushed’ without too
much substance. The content is maybe
tolerable for one run through, but there was little holiday joy to be found
here. Extras included both a “12 Days of Christmas” and “Deck the Halls” sing along track that
used recycled animation from Madagascar,
featuring mainly those odd but loveable penguins. As previously stated it is nice for a one
time listen and look, but little else.
Other special features included a Video Game Demo, “Gingy’s Dunking
Game,” and some other additionally slapped-on recycled Dreamworks musical
numbers. The extras overall left this
reviewer with the feeling of Bah-Humbug!
In the
end, Shrek the Halls maintained the
same amount of creative and loveable charm as the previous big screen features;
and to some extent was even better than Shrek
the Third. The flow overall was
hindered by time constraints and with the feature running just under a half
hour left it feeling rushed and overly blasé.
Shrek the Halls can be
referred to as a nice Christmas time tale, but it will not go down in the
fairytale books among the best like The
Grinch or Charlie Brown’s Christmas.
- Michael P. Dougherty II
