Donkey's Christmas Shrektacular 720p - (2010 Lang: English)

A quick celebration of the 'Shrek' universe.

"Donkey's Christmas Shrektacular" is a 7.5-minute (5 without credits) Christmas special by Walt Dohrn and Raman Hui that has the gang getting us into the holiday spirit with some musical numbers and Christmas food, which was pretty disgusting though. My favorite was probably "Fleas Navidad". All in all, this one here does not really add a whole lot to the franchise, but it is a decent watch for Shrek fans and it's nice to see they got basically all the big name actors from the "real" movies. Of course, the animation is always nice as usual. One of the better Shrek-themed short films (and there are quite a few of these) and overall, I enjoyed the watch and I recommend it. Thumbs up. Oh yeah and it's always nice to see these little dragon donkeys. They are so cute and amazing.

There's little to be said about 'Donkey's Caroling Christmas-tacular', as it is merely a swift celebration of the 'Shrek' universe. Unlike the films, which have an emotional tie for Shrek's character, this short is lacking a sense of story progression, which is a small shame in some way because 'Christmas-tacular' marks a return to eccentric, unrelenting humour in the manner of the original film and the first sequel; that is, a constant barrage of visual and verbal puns that the producers behind the third and fourth movies could not quite replicate, despite their best efforts.

Every one is catered for with screen time shared equally between Shrek's ever-popular family and friends, the joy of which is found in discovering the festive season through the perspective of a flea-ridden cat, or a living party snack. It is characterisation like this that contributes to the endearing nature of the series.

'Christmas-tacular' doesn't quite hit a home run like 'Shrek the Halls' before it, as that short successfully intertwined a simple plot that added the necessary weight to contain the sheer madness that punctuates nearly every moment of this franchise. However, Donkey's festivities are a great way to kick-start your own Christmas season.

This spin off from the SHREK series isn't going to win any awards but kids should find it entertaining. At just six-minutes there's really not too much going on outside what the title offers. Donkey (voice of Eddie Murphy) has a group of friends over to sing Christmas tunes and we get re-worked version of songs like Jingle Bells, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year and Jingle Bell Rock. Again, I'm sure children are going to love seeing their favorite characters back in this short, although I think adults might not be quite as entertained. I say that because while the re-worked songs here are cute enough, I think the film would have been much better had the original versions been sung. In fact, I'm sure many children are already familiar with the classic originals so even they might have had more fun with them. With that said, the animation is fairly good and there's no question that quite a bit of imagination went into the production. The re-worked songs on their own are quite imaginative as well.