Cynical Cinema

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Shrek The Halls on DVD November 4th. I sort of get it - it’s Christmas soon, and all these things are hitting the shelves a couple of months early because there are some crazy Christmas fanatics who want to load up on Elmo’s Christmas and Fat Albert’s Christmas and Shrek’s Christmas so they can watch a new one every day between now and December 25th. I guess. I don’t really understand the Christmas fanatics, and I also don’t understand most Christmas DVDs. Like this one. Shrek The Halls is a 22-minute made-for-TV episode that is, I suppose, a spin-off of the successful series of Shrek movies. It isn’t the Star Wars Holiday Special, in terms of being truly awful, but it certainly seems equally pointless.

It was pointless to make this episode. The main joke here, as it was with the last Shrek movie, is the lame “ogres fart and burp and eat gross stuff” joke. He’s farting. Get it? The baby ogres eat slime that smells gross. Get it? And then there is the same plot as there is in every Shrek movie. Christmas gets chaotic, Shrek gets angry, he fights with everyone, Donkey gets sad, Fiona admonishes her husband, Shrek feels bad, everyone makes up and everyone comes together in one big ball of happy. So…why was this even made? More to the point, why is this on DVD? It’s 22 minutes long. Why wasn’t this a special feature on the DVD for Shrek 3? Or thrown into the New Christmas Classics DVD alongside Casper, Fat Albert, Gumby and George Of The Jungle? How did this 22-minute clip merit it’s own DVD?

Frankly, I can’t understand how this even got approved for television. Here is a sample of the wittiness of this show - the song to close it all out:

“Shrek the halls with Puss and Donkey,
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.
Christmas time can be so wonky
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

If you couldn’t have written something like this when you were eleven, then you were a pretty slow eleven-year-old. And that means that even the slowest of eleven-year-olds will find this DVD unfunny, because they will recognize that it could have been written by a classmate. Or by some Hollywood writer with forty seconds to spare between takes on the set of Cavemen.

Mike Myers is a comic genius. His ability to create memorable characters is limitless, and every movie franchise he touches turns to gold. The Scottish dad in So I Married an Axe Murderer. The big fat Scottish guy in Austin Powers. The fun, green, fat Scottish ogre in Shrek. OK…maybe he can only create memorable Scottish characters. And Wayne from Wayne’s World…and Dr. Evil.

Remember the second Austin Powers movie? How it was virtually scene-for-scene the same movie as the first? And the third one was just a lame follow-up, where it was one long recycled “British people have bad teeth” joke? With Shrek 3, Mike Myers proved once again that while his ideas start out great, they have very little staying power. Shrek 3 is one big long ogres like farting and they smell bad joke. We get it. He’s an ogre. It’s what they do. Justin Timberlake makes an appearance in the film as a would-be king whose relevance to the movie is questionable at best. Shrek is no longer the most interesting character, the donkey and the cat are now tiresome, and I started to wish I could watch the spinoff movie starring the gingerbread man. THAT guy is still funny.

Shrek 3 is not a case of too much of a good thing, it’s a case of too much of the same thing. Much like that Shrek song, All-Star, by that band Smashmouth, it gets pretty irritating the third time around. Although I will say this. The film looks absolutely amazing on Blu-Ray. The Blu-Ray edition is being released September 23rd, Tuesday, by Paramount Home Entertainment.

When The Love Guru hit theatres the same week as Get Smart, I had a bet with my colleagues about which movie would be bigger. Both opening week and in the long run. I picked Get Smart. They picked the Love Guru. I think there is something about Canadians that wishes success upon Mike Myers even when that success is neither earned nor deserved. Mike Myers has done five movies. Ever. So I Married An Axe Murderer, Wayne’s World, Shrek, Austin Powers, and 54. Then he made thirty-one sequels, either bona-fide sequels or ripoffs of his previous work. The Love Guru falls into the latter category, and it gets released on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow, September 16th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. And it’s dreadful.

It actually makes me cringe to write the following words: The best thing in this movie is Justin Timberlake. Ugh. I feel like showering now. But it’s actually true. He is reasonably entertaining as a French Canadian hockey goalie who is a whiz with the ladies. His overblown French accent and his idiotic love for Celine Dion are worth a smirk or two. But Mike Myers, as the Indian guru Pitka, is doing the same role he has always done. Basically, he figures that putting on an accent (in this case an Indian one) is funny enough to carry a movie. He then figures that Verne Troyer simply being a tiny guy is funny. And that having an elephant walk around is funny. Or that two elephants having sex with each other is funny. In this movie, none of these things are funny. They are obnoxious.

Jessica Alba, once again, plays the hot woman. Just showing up is enough for her, because she is hot. Just like showing up is enough for Verne Troyer, because he is short. And for Mike Myers as well, because he has an accent. Get it? This really is one of the worst movies of the year, with almost no laughs and definitely no charm. Skip The Love Guru. And wait until Mike Myers makes his sixth movie. Oh, by the way - I won the bet. By a large margin. The Love Guru cost 62 million dollars and made 32 million. Opening weekend, 13 million. Get Smart opened with a 39 million dollar weekend, and has made 129 million dollars so far. With a production budget of 80 million dollars. Case closed.