“Puss in Boots”

By Bob Garver

Seven years ago, swarthy assassin-turned-good-guy Puss in Boots (Anto­nio Ban­deras) stole the show in “Shrek 2”. The film itself was clever and funny and Puss made it even bet­ter. As the series went along it the films became much worse and Puss became less appeal­ing along with them. Now the deci­sion has been made to remove the ogres from the equa­tion and see if the films are any bet­ter with Puss cen­ter stage. The result­ing film is about as unfunny as the lesser “Shrek” movies and proves that their crit­i­cal fail­ure had less to do with the choice of char­ac­ters and more to do with the choice of writers.

I can see the logic in mak­ing an adorable kitty the main char­ac­ter for a kids’ movie. The char­ac­ter is highly mar­ketable and with Christ­mas com­ing up there is no doubt that a stuffed Puss will be one of the season’s hottest toys. But for a full-length “Puss in Boots” film to work cre­atively, the char­ac­ter would have to undergo some major tweak­ing. He has never been much more than a feline ver­sion of Banderas’s Zorro, which was funny when he was a minor char­ac­ter three films ago, not so much now. The film sees him as the same one-joke char­ac­ter he’s always been, but this time the joke is staler than ever and the whole film is built around it.

Like the rest of the “Shrek” films, the story incor­po­rates ele­ments from var­i­ous fairy tales. Puss teams up with his old orphan­age buddy Humpty Dumpty (Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis) and a declawed house­cat (Salma Hayek) to steal the Goose That Lays Golden Eggs from atop the beanstalk while the vil­lain­ous Jack and Jill (Billy Bob Thorn­ton and Amy Sederis) pur­sue them for nefar­i­ous pur­poses. There’s also a plot involv­ing betrayal, revenge, and for­give­ness stem­ming back to Puss and Humpty’s orphan­age days. Two obser­va­tions: 1) Every “twist” in the story is see­able from a mile away and 2) It might be eas­ier to take Humpty seri­ously as a vil­lain and a threat if the char­ac­ter was known for any­thing other than being irrepara­bly damaged.

I wasn’t crazy about the look of the film, espe­cially when it came to the char­ac­ters. The ani­ma­tors seem to have focused much more on faces than bod­ies, result­ing in overly sharp facial fea­tures and bod­ies that are poorly defined. When the main char­ac­ters are sup­posed to be cute and cud­dly, we need to get a feel for what it would be like to cud­dle them.

The humor is as expected. The “Shrek” series is known for toi­let humor, this one has more of a lit­ter humor. Pro­mot­ing the film, many of the stars have said that the film is funny for both kids and grownups. Be weary of state­ments like this; what they really mean is that they’ve snuck in a few smutty jokes for adults that will prob­a­bly go over kids’ heads but are still present. Still, a few gags are decent. My favorite is the angle that the film uses to show the char­ac­ters falling off the beanstalk. And I guess it’s hard not to like a back­ground character’s reac­tions to inflam­ma­tory actions.

“Puss in Boots” has a sur­pris­ingly dark and emo­tional cli­max with a depth badly needed in the rest of the film. Still, there seems to be lit­tle point to the movie other than to get kids to laugh just hard enough that they’ll want their par­ents to buy them toys. It doesn’t have nearly the imag­i­na­tion of the first two “Shrek” films and I’m afraid that the inevitable sequels will con­tinue the down­ward spiral.

Two Stars out of Five.

“Puss in Boots” is rated PG for some adven­ture action and mild rude humor. Its run­ning time is 90 minutes.

Posted by Bob Garver on Nov 1 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.