Shrek the Halls (DreamWorks Animation, Pacific Data Images [PDI], 2007)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Alas, the second show NBC run after it, Shrek the Halls, wasn’t as charming or as interesting. It was made in 2007, around the same time as Shrek the Third, the third of the four Shrek theatrical features. It had some of the same characters as the movies, including Shrek himself (Mike Myers), his Shrek-ified bride Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), his obnoxious companions Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) and their familiars: Pinocchio (Cody Cameron), the Three Pigs (also Cody Cameron), the Gingerbread Man (Conrad Vernon) and his wife (Susan Fitzer), the Blind Mice (Christopher Knights) and a dinosaur. The one joke of the movie is that Shrek really wanted to spend Christmas alone with just himself, Fiona and their three ogre kids (Miles Christopher Bakshi, Nina Zoe Bakshi, and Dante James Hauser), but Fiona is so disgusted at Shrek for kicking out all their friends that she leaves and takes the kids with her. Ultimately Shrek learns his lesson and realizes that Christmas is something to be shared with friends as well as intimate or biological family members. Though made in the middle of the Shrek film cycle, Shrek the Halls has little or none of the imagination of the Shrek movies (which impressed me enough that when Charles and I got the first two from a co-worker who was dumping her DVD collection to worship at the shrine of the Great God STREAMING – barf – I ordered the last two from Amazon.com and we watched the whole cycle) and in particular the older and more sophisticated human characters from the films and in particular the ruling prince and princess played by John Cleese of Monty Python and Julie Andrews of … you know.