Shrek special serves up Christmas for the Dr. Phil era
The Christmas TV special endures, in part because it serves the needs of each new generation. And just as "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" became a meditation on individuality during the "I've Got to Be Me" '60s, the new "Shrek the Halls" now addresses our more realistic attempt to deal with dysfunctional families over the hectic, stressful holidays in the present day.
Not to get all moralistic. The best Christmas specials have morals, it's just that they hide them, at least until the end, as in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "A Charlie Brown Christmas." And ABC, which now owns the TV rights to those and the new "Shrek the Halls," gives viewers a great opportunity to compare and contrast all three by running them rapid-fire today and Wednesday. "Charlie Brown" airs at 7 p.m. today on WLS Channel 7, and "Shrek" debuts at 7 p.m. Wednesday, immediately followed by the original "Grinch" at 7:30.
First the new. "Shrek" is not a cheap TV knockoff of the DreamWorks film franchise. The animation is sharp, and all the star voices -- Mike Myers as the title ogre, Cameron Diaz as his wife, Princess Fiona, Eddie Murphy as Donkey and, yes, Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots -- are present and accounted for. If anything, the script, credited to two sets of writing teams, tries to cram too much into a half-hour.
Yet what it concentrates on most is how a big, turbulent, dysfunctional extended family makes it through a demanding season, full of personal fiefdoms and preconceptions and dreams and a little too much reality.
The whole concept of Christmas is foreign to Shrek. "I'm an ogre, OK?" he reminds everyone. "Ogres don't celebrate Christmas. Ogres don't celebrate anything."
Helped by a library copy of "Christmas for Village Idiots" and the advice of Donkey, Puss and the Gingerbread Man, all of whom deliver their own unique renditions of "The Night Before Christmas" (with the Gingerbread Man's as funny as it is frightening), he begins to get the point. The problem is he isn't permitted to act on it. Shrek's idea of how to do Christmas -- with just Fiona and their three new infant ogre children -- gets muddled up with everyone else's idea of how to do it.
Donkey comes as close as anyone to delivering the moral when he says in the midst of the madness, "Oh, Christmas is all about big fights. My momma used to say, 'Christmas ain't Christmas until somebody cries.'"
It's a little less than genuinely heartwarming, and my preteen daughter seemed disappointed with it when we sat down to watch the review DVD together. Yet I have to admit I admire its craft, and there's no denying it's a product of its age, an era in which Oprah and Dr. Phil feel forever obliged to advise us how to get through the holidays without slaughtering each other. Ours is an age of irony and self-awareness, not sentimentality and self-delusion.
Yet, you know what? Those sentimental old Christmas specials endure precisely because they know just when to reach for the heartstrings. When Linus explains the meaning of Christmas tonight with the opening cue of "Lights, please," it'll make your tiny, shriveled heart grow three sizes, just as is the case with the Grinch. When George Bailey drops to the brink of suicide in "It's a Wonderful Life," which airs at 7 p.m. Dec. 14 and 24 on NBC's WMAQ Channel 5, that's what gives Frank Capra's classic the gravitas to reach for its big, weepy climax about the importance of friends and family.
It's Christmas, for God's sake (quite literally), and if it takes a long stare into the abyss to make Ebenezer Scrooge realize how we're all interconnected, so be it.
Not many holiday specials have the nerve to reach for such ambitious moments, and most that do don't quite attain them. See "The Little Drummer Boy," or better yet don't. Better is Rankin-Bass' aforementioned "Rudolph," which airs at 7 p.m. Dec. 4 on CBS' WBBM Channel 2 (which later that night will celebrate the season with "The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show").
Other season high points include TBS' 24-hour marathon of "A Christmas Story" beginning at 7 p.m. Dec. 24. More typical of the season's exploitation, however, is "Santa's Funniest Moments," a collection of "Christmas bloopers" with Erik Estrada as host, airing at 7 p.m. Monday on WPWR Channel 50. But if I could scold MyNetwork TV for programming like that and "An All Dogs Christmas Carol," airing at 7 p.m. Dec. 13, I have to give them credit for reviving "Olive, the Other Reindeer" at 7 p.m. Dec. 17.
The best news of all this holiday season is that two of my lost favorites are out in new DVD packages: "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol" and Berke Breathed's "Bloom County"-derived "A Wish for Wings That Work," released for the first time in digital. Combine those with the "SCTV Volume 2" DVD, which includes the SCTV Staff Christmas Party and Johnny LaRue's Christmas crane shot, and you'll have the goods to counteract the worst, most exploitative holiday TV specials. But for the next two nights, Charlie Brown and the Grinch and, yes, to a lesser extent, Shrek will do just fine.
A TV trifecta
• "A Charlie Brown Christmas," 7 p.m. today on WLS Channel 7
• "Shrek the Halls," 7 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 7
• "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," 7:30 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 7
In the air
Remotely interesting: Geoffrey Baer turns his attention from the city's skyline to its waistline in "The Foods of Chicago: A Delicious History," debuting at 7:30 p.m. today on WTTW Channel 11.
PBS' "Great Performances" presents "Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival Chicago," recorded here this summer, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 11.
End of the dial: Catholic talk radio as presented on Relevant Radio has moved to WNTD 950-AM from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays.
Heather Sterns, board chair of Chicago Public Radio, has left that position to run for the Illinois State Senate seat in the 7th District, although she could return if she loses the primary election Feb. 5. Tony Weisman steps in as the new chair, with Prudence Beidler as vice-chair.