Puss in Boots: A spin-off from a slowly descending animated film franchise, featuring a side character who has up until now only been used as a “joke machine”, serviceable for short spurts of screen time but completely untested as the main protagonist of a feature-length story. Bad idea? Definitely. Bad result? Well, that’s another thing.
A couple of years ago, the Puss in Boots project looked like a desperate money-grabbing attempt by DreamWorks, seemingly trying to cash in on the insanely profitable Shrek franchise by extending the Antonio Banderas-voiced cat gags into an entire film. Those fears were blessedly unfounded, as Puss in Boots turns out to be one of the most endearing DreamWorks animated films to date.
Banderas’ Puss gets a character makeover fitting its increased importance, adding real pathos, motives and relationships, where we get to know his home country, the truly wild and chaotic Mexico, where humans, cats and an assortment of fairy-tale characters run amok in their endless race to get ahead in the world. Coincidentally (but probably not), these added character traits make Puss echo another legendary Banderas character, the sword-swinging, charming and very articulate Zorro. So much, in fact, that the only thing preventing this film from being titled “Zorro 3: The Hiss of Zorro” is that he’s… well… a cat.
And true to form, the cat gags are both frequent and hilarious. Don’t worry, not even a quarter of the really funny ones are featured in the trailer above. And better yet, they do not take away from the main story, which is basically a Mexican twist on Jack and the magic beans, Jack and Jill (not the film, don’t worry), the Golden Goose and Humpty Dumpty, here featured as a scheming egg-man, a former friend of Puss’, who betrayed him many years ago but now approaches him in hopes of reconciliation with an offer of “the best job of their lives”.
The Fairy Tale Blender is set to a considerably lower shred level than in the Shrek films, keeping the plot close to comprehensible throughout. As a result it’s a bit thin at the edges, and a late plot twist in particular is both predictable and contrived, but Puss’ character and his feline counterpart, the Salma Hayek-voiced Kitty Softpaws, (however generic a love object she is) manage to escort the audience over that hurdle to a satisfying conclusion. And Shrek is nowhere to be seen, thank the gods.
The animation is impressively crafted, especially the beanstalk sequence and Puss’ subtle physical characteristics throughout the film, where the dusty Mexican setting offsets the sometimes off-putting sheen of DreamWorks’ animation. You’re definitely watching animation, but it’s more involving than in Shrek, for example.
The music draws no less from its Zorro links than Puss’ character, and the soundtrack is blissfully void of put-upon contemporary pop numbers, except for an aggressively redundant and instantly out-dated credit sequence to Lady Gaga’s “Americano”. Why ruin a perfectly good, generic ending with a pop-culture reference which is sure to look tacky by the time the film hits the DVD/Blu-ray shelves?
Final verdict: The Hiss of Zorro – sorry, Puss in Boots is an enjoyable, endearing film that successfully fleshes out everyone’s favorite side character from the Shrek films and gives us a simple and truly funny, if a little forgettable, Mexican adventure with a fairy tale twist.
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