Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Aside from the first Shrek (2001), I have avoided all entries in Dreamwork's preeminent animation franchise of which Puss in Boots (2011) was spun-off. So I would have also skipped its sequel, The Last Wish, were it not nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. I'm glad I saw it. While it has the same relentlessly frenetic pacing as most contemporary kid's movies, it occasionally slows down to catch its breath. And if computer-animated movies must be so aggressively in your face with their visuals and editing, let's at least populate them with entertaining characters and a script that isn't too condescending to either the kiddies or the adults in the audience.

While I only saw little bits of Shrek 2 (2004)—watching on VHS over the shoulders of the kids of friends I was staying with—it was easy to see that Antonio Banderas's Puss in Boots was the most fun interpretation of the many fairy tale characters that movie plays with. It's not surprising Puss got his own stand-alone feature. Not knowing any of the backstory from the prior release was not an issue watching this eleven-year-later sequel. It feels made for folks who come in fresh. In fact, even the film's animation style seems disconnected from what I remember of Shrek. Switching up the visual aesthetic for a series instalment that comes more than ten years after its progenitor is a smart choice, as it can help a movie feels like less of a retread. And the story, about the swashbuckling, self-aggrandising Puss starting to feel his age now that he is down to the last of his nine lives, also seems fitting for a late series entry, especially one starring an actor in his sixties who won his Oscar for playing an ageing film artist in declining health. But, unlike so much of Shrek, the meta-textual elements of this picture feel gracefully subtextual rather than front and centre. The supporting cast also charms by allowing their movie-star personalities to be subsumed by their characters rather than the inverse, which is one of the things I dislike about the humor of Shrek and so many modern animated features.

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Puss in Boots: The Last Wish delivers a decent adventure with themes that feel aimed at younger viewers without feeling insufferable or overtly saccharine. Best of all, the script actually had dialogue that made me laugh—rare for this type of movie.