Release Info:
Original Air Date: November 28, 2007
DVD Release Date: November 4, 2008
Online Availability: Amazon for $11.99

When I initially heard about Shrek the Halls, I had to groan. I figured this was just another movie to profit off a series that was dying with each and every film that was made in it. Don’t get me wrong, the original movie was brilliant. Two and three weren’t that bad either, but after three, it felt like it was about time for the story to be over. Apparently not, considering all of the original cast members came back to reprise their roles for this exciting, holiday special.

While Shrek the Halls is set sometime after the ending of Shrek the Third (the Shrek babies are still little), I actually think that this is actually better than Shrek the Third. I can’t imagine how the next two Shrek films are going to turn out. I had thought that this holiday movie would be boring and trite, merely because the third film was a declining version of the original two in the series. If four and five return to the humor level of one and two, they could be good. Shrek the Halls has given me hope of that, but, if for some reason they don’t, it will be just another wasted series of movies, made just to gain a profit.

The thing I like about Shrek the Halls is that it had humor, even some dirty humor (dirty diapers), but it wasn’t all stupid humor. The movie also had a lot of heart. Shrek reminded me of the lovable yet disgusting ogre he was in the first film. Shrek is a gross, nasty ogre with a bad temper who smells bad and likes anything completely disgusting. Shrek is incredibly likable despite these flaws. I didn’t feel that the third movie accurately captured Shrek in all his glory. Since this pretty much sums up Shrek in Shrek the Halls, I feel this movie should be more of an extension of the first two movies (though pertinent information from the third movie is helpful to understand how Shrek got all those ogre babies).

As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, I really like Shrek the Halls. While I’m not sure if I’d call it a budding Christmas classic, the movie is something the family can watch and enjoy during the holidays. The nice thing about Shrek is that he has an appeal that transcends generations. From grandparents (Great?) to the smallest child, Shrek and his Christmas story is bound to put a smile on everyone’s face. I plan to watch this with my family during the holiday season and recommend you do the same.

The Shrek the Halls Plot
I only gave the acting a 4 because I don’t like Cameron Diaz in much of anything. While I feel the role of an ogre suits her better than most of the other roles she plays, I still don’t think she’s that talented in the acting department. If this were based on the performances of Myers and Murphy alone, the acting would have received a score of 5. As Donkey and Shrek, the two have great chemistry, even if Donkey is slightly annoying in every imaginable way.

This isn’t supposed to be as comprehensive as the Shrek movies. This is a half-hour special designed for television. This means that the special gets right to the point of the plot. The plot is pretty simple as far as Christmas movies go. It’s Shrek’s first Christmas and he must learn its true meaning to be able to celebrate properly with his family.

Shrek, Fiona and the ogre babies are going to be celebrating their first Christmas together. In fact, this is Shrek’s first Christmas, period. He isn’t exactly sure how to go about celebrating Christmas. While he pretends he’s not interested, because Christmas seems like such a happy holiday for his friend, Donkey, he actually wants to give Fiona and the kids the best Christmas ever. Shrek has promised Fiona a nice Christmas, so when trying to find her a present at the local bookstore, the shopkeeper sells him a book, “Christmas for Village Idiots.”

This step by step guide book teaches Shrek everything he needs to know to celebrate Christmas with Fiona and his children. They put a spin on Christmas, ogre style with the intent of celebrating Christmas Eve alone with each other. The only problem is that his “extended family” shows up, to ruin the alone time and family fun he’s having. Of course, ogre-style is not acceptable and Shrek’s friends try to show him how to have a proper Christmas.

With Shrek just wanting to make Christmas perfect, he has to find a way to get Donkey, Puss in Boots and the rest of the gang to go away so he can give his own family the perfect Christmas.

Storyline/Plot: 4 out of 5 stars
Replayability: 5 out of 5 stars
Acting: 4 out of 5 stars
Directing: 4 out of 5 stars

Audio/Visual:
If you’ve seen the Shrek movies, then expect the same, if not slightly better, visual quality from Shrek the Halls. This is CGI animation, so you can expect a pretty good image. You can choose to watch Shrek the Halls in anamorphic widescreen or in full frame. I generally choose widescreen, as it suits my television set. Dreamworks puts its all into this video display, which is at a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The animation is colored brightly with a rich color palette. The black levels are solid and everything is quite sharp. There are minimal, if any, visual errors, making this display, for a standard DVD, near perfect.

There are a variety of soundtracks on the Shrek the Halls DVD. I recommend English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. This is your standard, run of the mill track for an animated feature. While I didn’t have to toggle the volume, it wasn’t impressive like those action-packed tracks that make use of all parts of the speakers. There are also multiple other tracks including an English Dolby Digital Stereo, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Closed Captioning is available in English. Subtitles are available in English, Spanish and French.

Visual: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Audio: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Bonus Features:
I wasn’t too impressed with the bonuses. I don’t really feel that Paramount added them for fans of Shrek. I think this was just a way for this movie to have bonuses. The first bonus is the “12 Days of Christmas Sing Along” and the “Deck the Halls Sing Along.” These sing alongs are set to animation from the Dreamworks movie, Madagascar. More music is available with the “DreamWorks Animation Video Jukebox” featurette. There are eight different musical numbers, all from various Dreamworks animated movies. This may sound fun, but it’s actually pretty boring.

In “Gingy’s Dunking Game” you can play against family members to see who gets the best score. This is a matching game, but its not that engaging. One or two games and I was ready to quit. Finally there is a self-explanatory feature called, “Shrek Carnival Graze Video Game Demo & Cheat Code.” That’s all that’s on this DVD. Considering I wasn’t expecting much on this release, I’m not surprised by what’s been offered.

Bonus Features: 2 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line:
Shrek the Halls is a cute and fun holiday flick. It doesn’t matter if you have kids or not, I can see this becoming one of those holiday movie traditions in a wide variety of families. It’s so much fun to see Shrek and his family of ogres discovering Christmas for the first time. As Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, Puss in Boots and the rest of the Shrek gang discover the true meaning of Christmas, you and your family can, too along with them! With the holidays right around the corner, this movie comes highly recommended.

Overall Rating: 3.86 out of 5 stars

Technorati Tags: Shrek the Halls, DVD Review, Movie, Mike Myers, Original Cast, Christmas, Holiday Movie, Paramount, Family Film

Release Info:
DVD Release Date: October 25, 2008
Online Availability: Amazon for $10.99

Going into a movie knowing that parents were complaining about it made me somewhat wary when I popped The Flight Before Christmas into my DVD player. I’m not one to listen to the crowd, but everywhere I looked on the web, I was warned. DO NOT LET YOUR YOUNG CHILD WATCH THIS. I’m always intrigued by what parents consider inappropriate for their kids. Apparently, most parents think The Flight Before Christmas is one movie young kids shouldn’t watch.

Well, after watching this, I can’t exactly agree. Seriously. The issue for most parents is that The Flight Before Christmas contains a theme in it that might make young kids cry. Apparently, a group of cartoon wolves want to eat Santa, take over Christmas and then eat little children when they visit their houses in Santa’s place. The latter part (you know, about eating children) doesn’t seem to be the troubling part. Parents think their young kids will cry because the wolves want to eat Santa.

You know what? I’d let my four year old nephew watch this. I don’t think he’d cry. In fact, since you can safely assume (this is a kids movie) that no Santa was eaten in this movie, it’s about as harmless as watching Wile E. Coyote try to capture and eat the Roadrunner. Look at all the hunters who try to catch/eat Bugs Bunny. He’s a pretty lovable yet kids realize that the bad guys probably aren’t going to catch Bugs. It’s just common sense. So, I don’t know why the prospect of cartoon wolves eating Santa is absolutely terrifying, since it’s pretty much the same concept.

One woman watching The Flight Before Christmas claims her three year old screamed and cried throughout the entire movie. If that was my kid, I’d do the smart thing and turn it off. If your kid is going to scream why make them endure an entire movie they obviously hate? The reason, she claims, for little Billy crying is because Santa was going to be eaten by wolves. The movie was dark and scary. Yeah. I thought it was terrifying, too. Catching my sarcasm?

Seriously, The Flight Before Christmas fails for so many other reasons, such as the annoyance factor of Wilma (played by an untalented singing-wise, Emma Roberts) and the snooze factor for this vewy scawy movie. I can see why Weinstein decided to send this one straight to DVD. I can’t imagine what would have happened had The Flight Before Christmas made it to movie theaters. I assume it’d bomb and parents would try to get it shut out of theaters, but that’s just a guess on my part.

The Plot
While I am not exactly sure why parents have a problem with this movie, I am surprised more don’t have a problem with the apparent fact that young Niko is an illegitimate reindeer, born during a fling his mother had with one of Santa’s flying reindeer. That’s at least what his mother tells him, and truth be told, the flying reindeer team propagates the idea of infidelity and affairs outside marriage, when none of them know if they could possibly be NIko’s father. Of all the things to complain about, I think this would be the one, but apparently wolves eating Santa is more threatening to families than illegitimate born children…er reindeer.

The plot of The Flight Before Christmas revolves around a precocious reindeer named Niko (Andrew McMahon). Niko knows he is the son of a flying reindeer but no one in his village believes him. As he tries desperately to fly despite a bad case of vertigo, the other reindeer enjoy making fun of him for his efforts. This is true except for the girl reindeer who likes him and the flying squirrel, Julius (Norm McDonald), who is the only father figure in Niko’s life.

Despite warnings from the adults in the community where he lives, Niko goes off outside the village to practice flying, away from the kids who pick on him. He unknowingly attracts the attention of hungry wolves (the predators of reindeer), who have not been able to find the hidden reindeer village. After Niko leads them back to the village and they almost kill one of the leader reindeer, everyone blames Niko for the entire group having to leave the village to find a new, safe place to live.

Niko decides to run away to find Santa’s hidden village where he can meet his dad and live with him (he hopes). When Niko’s mother, Oona (Sysan Slott) discovers he is missing, Julius promises to go after him. However, he discovers Niko won’t be returning and the wolves have decided to follow him instead, since he’ll make a nice appetizer. They also have kidnapped a poodle that has lost her way, though one of the rogue wolves likes her.

After Niko and Julius escape death thanks to a singing weasel named Wilma (Emma Roberts), the wolves regroup, and under the tutelage of their leader, Black Wolf (Alan Stanford), decide to follow Niko to Santa’s village. There they can eat all the flying reindeer, Santa, and take over Christmas. While Niko learns the journey is far and finding his dad wasn’t what he expected (and he discovers whether he really is a flying reindeer or not), he also learns that maybe his true family was closer to home all along.

Truth be told, the best thing about this movie was Norm MacDonald. Julius was a pretty cool cat (uh…squirrel), but obviously that’s not saying much. Your kids might like this, but it is a bit of a snoozer for adults. Plus Wilma sings ALL the time and Emma Roberts cannot sing. I wanted earplugs for all her scenes. It’s very annoying to say the least. Ultimately, this movie is a ‘rent first and buy if you like it’ kind of flick.

Storyline/Plot: 2 out of 5 stars
Replayability: 1 out of 5 stars
Acting: 2 out of 5 stars
Directing: 2 out of 5 stars

Audio/Visual:
The visual quality for The Flight Before Christmas is pretty much the best thing this movie has going for it. I’m not a lover of CGI animated films, but I really liked the quality of this movie. It’s sharp with bright natural colors and really no noticeably problematic animation or visual errors. Colors look natural with a wide color palette, while blacks are sharp and leveled nicely throughout the animation. The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen picture would have been complimented by a better story.

The audio for this movie is also pretty good. It’s Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. The dialogue is dynamic and the movie makes the best use of its speakers, when it can. Of course, this movie isn’t loaded with music and special effects so the audio track can only go so far. There is the option for English subtitles once the movie begins.

Visual: 5 out of 5 stars
Audio: 4 out of 5 stars

Bonus Features:
You won’t be surprised to know that The Flight Before Christmas is devoid of all special features. I’m not exactly sure if this is a blessing in disguise or not. Fans of the movie won’t be happy about this though.

Bonus Features: 0 out of 5 stars

Bottom Line:
The Flight Before Christmas is a take it or leave it DVD offering from Weinstein. I didn’t really enjoy it, but kids might. It’s boring, predictable and somewhat annoying in parts, but it really isn’t scary. In fact, this movie even has a happy ending. So, I think young kids can watch it, as long as you’re not offended by wolves being evil, not that you’d want to watch it since it suffers from problems with the plot, oddly annoying characters and it made me want to go to sleep. Either way, decide if you want to buy this or let it be. The choice is yours!

Overall Rating: 2.29 out of 5 stars

Technorati Tags: DVD Review, The Flight Before Christmas, animated, Emma Roberts, Norm MacDonald, Weinstein