The Stew

Lowered expectations FTW.

I’m not a huge Shrek fan. I thought the first one was amusing, the second one was mildly amusing, and the third one — well, I couldn’t be bothered with it. The missus reports that it was slightly less than mildly amusing, so at least it fits a pattern.

So I almost skipped the TV special Shrek the Halls. Can you blame me? Look at the incredibly lame promotional still. These things are supposed to make you want to watch the show. In the modern parlance, epic fail.

In order to get me to actually watch this thing, two great truths won out: 1) broadcast TV is still free; 2) DVR space is cheap. So I devoted roughly 3 gigs to recording it.

I can’t believe I actually thought this thing was funny. Laugh-out-loud at times, even. It should have been as completely lame as this picture, but it wasn’t.

It helps that the entire star-filled cast was involved. You’d almost expect a series of B- to D-listers to be asked to do the voices, just to keep costs down. (Let’s fill the comments with who could have provided voices. How about Kathy Griffin for Fiona?) These are real actors doing, generally, a really good job. Cameron Diaz seemed to be the only one who wasn’t having a blast, but that’s because Fiona spends the entire show being the straight guy… gal… ogre. Antonio Banderas and Eddie Murphy are both better than they needed to be, and Mike Myers, when his accent isn’t going all wonky, is perfectly acceptable.

The animation in HD looked pretty damn good, but Dreamworks can’t match Pixar when it comes to facial animation. At times, it seemed like the voices were floating out of the heads of the characters, rather than being perfectly in synch with what their mouths were doing. It’s possible that the sound was broadcast just a hair off from the video, but I think I remember that phenomenon at the movie theaters with the Shrek movies as well.

All in all, definitely worth a look. Especially for the 20-second “pigs in a blanket” meta-joke.

I’m unemployed again. I’m in better economic shape than last time, and expect to weather this without too much trouble.

Of course, that’s what I said last time, and I went 13 months without a job.

I can’t blame Bush for this, but it’s tempting. That 13-month jobless span was during his first administration; my current situation is during his second. Both times, he’s been rosy about the economic picture. I guess we’ll see.