SHREK THE HALLS

A new treat for the 2007 holiday season is a new television special starring everyone's favourite ogre! That's right, this year Shrek got his own Christmas special!

More importantly, Shrek the Halls will premiere as a television special! It seems that these days television specials are a thing of the past with companies chosing to send them straight to DVD. But it is great to see Dreamworks creating a soon-to-be-classic television special just like the olden days.


The story is set after Shrek the Third as Shrek, Fiona and the kids prepare for their first Christmas together as a family. The only problem is that Shrek has no idea what Christmas is! Shrek comes to the conclusion that Christmas is all about decorations, a big feast and telling a Christmas story to his family. But all of his plans go to waste when Donkey shows up with all of their friends who want to party through the holiday!

I am not a fan of the Shrek movies but this special is something different. It looks like Dreamworks spent a lot of time making this look like the movies. The animation is just as good as anything from the films and all of the original cast of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas returns to do the voices!


While the story a timeless classic, the search for Christmas and his reaction when it all gets messed up fits so well with Shrek's personality. The story doesn't feel forced and it is funny and heart-warming. But the best part is that it doesn't try to parody every Christmas special that ever came out (the constant movie parodies is a big reason why I don't like the movies).

All in all, this is a good special that I'm sure will be seen for years to come. It's not on DVD yet, but you can bet that if it doesn't come out this year you'll have to wait until next year to see it again.