Dreamworks Short Stories Review

Dreamworks have created a series of short stories, using popular characters from their feature length films. One of them, Scared Shrekless is set during Halloween. Shrek challenges his friends to stay at Lord Farquaads abandoned castle for the night. Before entering the castle Donkey challenges the other characters to scare each other by seeing who can tell the scariest story. This was my personal favourite from the series of shorts. The writers made references to actual horror movies such as Psycho and the Exorcist. I liked the fact that they made references to these iconic horror movies as it shows they know the horror genre well. Showing them in this animated form rather than the realistic one was a nice touch. However this can be seen as controversial by some parents. Should the parents know the origins of these references they may be uncomfortable exposing their children to it. This is entirely possible given how timeless these movies are. Regardless these were, in my opinion, the best parts of the short. I am a massive fan of horror movies and was really surprised these two interests overlapped as they are so different. Although obviously they made it more comical in order to appeal to the right audience, children. Shown by their use of popular children's characters. I was extremely impressed with the voice acting work from Dean Edwards, who plays the role of Donkey. During the entire 24 minutes run-time I never suspect that Eddie Murphy was no longer playing the role. I only realised once I began looking into it.

I would recommend watching all the short stories as they tell you more about the characters, expanding the fiction. They gain attention by using popular characters that have already had commercial success and found a fan base. Fans love to see new things/episodes from there favourite characters. Other shorts focus on stories based on films like Megamind, Madagascar, Monster vs Aliens and many more. I found these episodes when looking through Netflix and thought they were brilliant.