Last month saw the release of Puss In Boots, a spin-off of DreamWorks' four-movie Shrek franchise. While I have yet to see it, I did watch a new-to-me Shrek special, Shared Shrekless, on Halloween.
Shrek
has proven fertile ground for featurettes of this nature. It's fun to
see familiar characters in a specific seasonal situation, and in this
case, the characters are doubly familiar since they are largely the
classic inhabitants of fairy tales who have been twisted slightly to
appear in their current form. The Shrek Halloween special is very much
along the same lines as the Christmas special Shrek the Halls, with a gaggle of woodlanders interrupting Shrek's celebration for a night of storytelling.
While
gruff green Scottish ogre Shrek (Mike Myers) is overwhelmed and ornery
in the Christmas special, here he is more in his element and happy to
challenge his friends to a spooky story scare-off in the now-abandoned
Duloc castle. Because of the brief time allotted for the special, we
don't have time for very many stories, but each of the stories we do
hear has a distinct tone.
Shrek's story, a spoof of The Exorcist starring a demented Pinocchio (Cody Cameron), is creepy but perhaps the least memorable. The funniest is the Psycho-flavored
one told by Donkey (Dean Edwards) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas),
who spend the whole time one-upping each other as they try to make each
other's fictional selves endure ever more humiliating horrors.
However,
the clear standout - for me, anyway - is the blood-curdling tale told
by Gingy (Conrad Vernon), just as it was in the Christmas special. Both
stories involve a ladylove; in the first, she is undone by an unlikely
villain, but here, the romantic interest is also the antagonist, a
freakish Frankencookie whose excess of sugar in the production process
has rendered her a smothering nightmare of a girlfriend. Kristin Schaal,
who I know best as mildly psychotic uber-fan Mel on Flight of the Conchords, seems a perfect choice to convey that sugary-sweet stalker vibe.
I
found the animation to be excellent, with all of the fairy tale
characters and locations getting an ominous edge. The eerie trees
bending to the force of a late-night wind and the cobwebbed ruins of
Lord Farquaad's domain are particularly unsettling, and the new
animatronic Welcome to Duloc display is frankly terrifying. Most of the
original voice cast returns here, with the main exception being Eddie
Murphy, but I didn't notice a difference in the voices as I was
watching, and Donkey is my favorite character, so I'd say Edwards is an
outstanding replacement.
In addition to the main special, which runs just over 20 minutes long, the DVD includes the five-minute-long Thriller Night, which is a spoof of Michael Jackson's Thriller
video. It's fun to see so many Shrek characters, starting with those
who met their demise in the movies, mimicking those iconic dance moves,
but my favorite part of this short is the beginning, which finds a very
disgruntled Shrek emerging from a theater playing a movie clearly
modeled after The Sound of Music. I especially love Donkey's enthusiasm for yodeling puppets.
I'm
one of those folks who scares easily, so while I enjoy getting into the
fun of Halloween with some timely movies and specials, I prefer those
that are geared at a family audience. Scared Shrekless fits the
bill perfectly, and the grumpy ogre seems a better fit for Halloween
than Christmas. Hence, while the special isn't exactly up there with It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown for me, it's one I would be happy to give a repeat viewing in Halloweens to come.
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