‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’ Review: Swashbuckling Again

By Glenn Kenny

It might be hard to believe it today, but there was a time when “Shrek” seemed like a breath of fresh air in the world of big-screen animation. Its salty humor and insistent pop culture knowingness was fun for a minute, before the sequels got nudging and formulaic. And then there was the whole shoving-Smash Mouth-down-our-throat issue. DreamWorks, the studio that concocted “Shrek,” soon enough became the anti-Pixar — in a bad way.

So it’s a pleasant surprise that “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” the second feature film highlighting a beloved children’s lit character who became one of the favorite additions to the “Shrek” universe, is for the most part winning. It contains amusing jokes and has an old-fashioned impulse to tug at heart strings. This in spite of the video-game-suggestive plot construction, in which Puss and cohorts, aided by an animated map, race to a dark forest to find a wishing star, with other children’s lore characters in hot, malevolent pursuit.

Puss is voiced by Antonio Banderas, whose purr can warm the cockles of any and all, as is also the case with Salma Hayek Pinault, who plays his love-and-hate interest Kitty Softpaws. Directed by Joel Crawford, the movie’s overall tone harks back not so much to prior DreamWorks pictures as it does to the “Fractured Fairy Tales” of the old TV cartoon “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” To this end, Goldilocks and the Three Bears are now a band of criminals (including voice work by the powerhouses Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone and Florence Pugh). This often charming movie will play particularly well if you’re a cat person. But who’s not?

Somewhat mystifyingly, some top-secret algorithmic function in DreamWorks Animation’s audience-reaction data analysis software has decreed that yet another comeback is in order for the sort of OK-ish and meh-plus character of Puss in Boots, smokily voiced by Antonio Banderas, originally seen in 2004 in Shrek 2, and then in the 2010 spinoff feature Puss in Boots. The numbers have come chuntering out of the side of some giant IBM-style computer, the suits have frowningly inspected them, and another tranche of Puss in Boots content has been greenlit.

Once again, debonair outlaw Puss in Boots – a sort of cleaned-up southern European version of Jack Sparrow – is having sword-twirling adventures, again in the company of his paramour Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek); but now PiB must confront his own mortality, having used up eight of his nine lives. He is on a quest to put off the evil hour by finding the legendary wishing star which once fell to earth like a comet; he and Kitty join forces with the perky mutt Perrito (Harvey Guillén), but must battle other fairytale/nursery-rhyme honchos, including a Cockney crime family in the form of Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears (Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone and Samson Kayo), and “Big” Jack Horner (John Mulaney) – to whom all the funny lines are given. Wagner Moura voices the Wolf, who is the grim reaper, wielding a couple of sickles.

Really, this movie is a huge 102-minute additional scene, something that would go on the extras package of a Blu-ray edition of the previous Puss in Boots film, or possibly get its own video-on-demand release. It feels like something to put on your TV or iPad to pacify a toddler; nothing wrong with that, of course, and many stressed parents would call it the noblest artistic calling. But how bland and forgettable this film is, without in the smallest way harnessing the real performing power of Banderas, Colman, Pugh, Winstone et al.

Eleven years after the “Shrek 2” spinoff “Puss in Boots,” the sassy Spanish feline voiced by Antonio Banderas has returned for another fairy tale-busting adventure, directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, and written by Paul Fischer (with a story by Tommy Swerdlow and Tom Wheeler). Crawford, Mercado and Fischer all worked on the DreamWorks Animation favorites “Trolls” and “The Croods: A New Age,” and the trio bring a similar “chaotic good” energy to “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” which remixes a new set of familiar nursery rhymes and beloved children’s fables to entertaining ends.

Our titular tabby is living a swashbuckler’s life, swilling leche, singing songs, saving towns, raking in the adoration and accolades, when he dies his eighth death, landing him on his ninth, and final, life. Spooked by a visit from the grim-reaping Big Bad Wolf (Wagner Moura), Puss decides to hangs up his hat and boots and head for retirement in the home of a crazy cat lady, Mama Luna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

But he can’t escape adventure, and soon Puss is caught up in the quest for a magical wish, which is in the possession of a greedy, pie-producing hoarder of enchanted trinkets, Little Jack Horner (John Mulaney). Remember him, with the Christmas pie and the plum on his thumb? Jack, now quite big, is also pursued by Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and her cockney crime syndicate family of bears (Ray Winstone, Olivia Colman, Samson Kayo), who want the wish to make things “just right,” of course.

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