Puss in Boots 2011 - Review by Mail Online

Puss In Boots (U)

Verdict: Far from purrfect

Rating:

This is a 3D spin-off of the Shrek films and has as its hero that legendary swordsman Puss in Boots, seductively voiced by Antonio Banderas.

It is also an origins story, explaining who the ferocious feline was, pre-Shrek.

Impeded and aided by romantic interest Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek, phoning in her performance) and a bad egg, in the form of his childhood friend Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifiniakis, underpowered), Puss goes on a quest to steal magic beans from a pair of thugs called Jack and Jill (a wasted Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris). 

SCROLL DOWN FOR TRAILER
 

Let's dance: Puss and Kitty, voiced by Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek) in the DreamWorks Animation Puss In Boots

With these beans, Puss hopes to grow a magic beanstalk, climb up it and steal the legendary goose that lays the golden eggs.

But up in the clouds, he encounters not the giant from Jack And The Beanstalk but something even more terrifying: Mother Goose.

Though Puss was an entertaining subsidiary character in Shrek 2, he fails to convince as a leading character.

He’s vocally monotonous, and lacks the self-loathing complexity of Shrek and the naive charm of Donkey.

Too many of the jokes depend on adult humour about his sexual prowess.

And I’m unconvinced that gags about jail-rape and Fight Club have any place in a children’s film.

Australian premiere: Antonio Banderas (left), Salma Hayek and Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg pose with Puss in Sydney

The pace is crippled by inordinately lengthy exposition and repetitive use of flashbacks.

Only the eye-popping action sequences are fun, especially the climb up the beanstalk and a chase along dangerous cliffs.

Puss In Boots is blessedly less dependent on insider showbiz jokes than Shrek 3 and 4 and marks a return to the basics of the series — an irreverent take on fairy stories.

However, the script is nowhere near the quality of the first two Shrek films, seriously lacking in wit and comic punchlines.

You could, if you were given to lame puns, describe it as paw.

ref: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Puss in Boots 2011 - Review by Guardian

Puss in Boots – review

This prequel to the Shrek cartoon franchise, with Antonio Banderas as the heavily accented cat of the title, is an entertaining, if not rip-roaring spin-off

 

Peter Bradshaw 

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 8 December 2011

Claws out ... Puss in Boots
 
1. Puss in Boots
2. Production year: 2011
3. Country: USA
4. Runtime: 90 mins
5. Directors: Chris Miller
6. Cast: Amy Sedaris, Antonio Banderas, Billy Bob Thornton, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis

It hasn't been that long since Antonio Banderas startled audiences with his role as the sexually obsessed cosmetic surgeon in Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In. Now he is back in a more wholesome, if hardly less predatory and calculating role. This is a spin off from the awe-inspiringly lucrative Shrek franchise, and Banderas is reprising his voice work for the animated character Puss in Boots, or as he breathily announces it, poooooshh eeeen booohhtsshh. This solo adventure is a prequel, showing his early life, and it plays out like Sergio Leone Lite. Puss in Boots is now in Mexico, very far from the European forests where he is to meet Shrek. The young feline was brought up in an orphanage (like Kung Fu Panda, he may yet meet his parents) and it is as a kitten that he first meets his deeply unreliable best pal, Humpty Dumpty, voiced by Zach Galifianakis, and they form an outlaw duo. Humpty has the film's best line. Terrified of being captured by the authorities, he stammers: "Do you know what happens to eggs in jail? Well … it ain't over easy!" PiB has some love interest: a sparky relationship with a sneak thief named Kitty Softpaws, voiced by Salma Hayek. It's all amiable stuff, with a perfectly decent script, and the feline hero lapping his milk gets an indulgent laugh. Perhaps not if you're a dog person.

Puss in Boots 2011 - Review by The Telegraph

Puss in Boots, review

Robbie Collin finds that most of the jokes in Puss in Boots fit into two categories: “Ha ha, he’s Spanish” and “Ha ha, he’s a cat”. 

 

U cert, 90 min. Dir Chris Miller Starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis

The Shrek series began as a satire on Hollywood’s appropriation of fairy-tale imagery, so it’s ironic that it went on to become a latter-day Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs, yielding an average of £471 million per film.

Now that particular goose has been cooked, Puss in Boots is DreamWorks Animation’s attempt to spin off an equally lucrative replacement – although, disappointingly, it has more in common with the drab, smug third and fourth Shrek films than with the spikily enjoyable first two.

Set before Puss meets Shrek – not that it seems to make any meaningful difference – this film follows the feline swashbuckler (voiced by Antonio Banderas) as he hunts for a pouch of magic beans, with help from a standard-issue Girl Power sidekick, Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), and his childhood friend Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis). These beans are currently in the possession of Jack and Jill, who for reasons not immediately apparent are a pair of fat, ugly, middle-aged outlaws.

Most of the jokes in Puss in Boots fit into two categories: “Ha ha, he’s Spanish” and “Ha ha, he’s a cat”. Mildly tedious cat humour is an internet staple and the film pitches at exactly that level: it’s all too easy to picture the film’s six writers in a West Hollywood branch of Starbucks, slouched round a MacBook and cackling at YouTube. Many of the gags, including a studenty crack about “medicinal catnip”, are aimed straight over young viewers’ heads.


By Robbie Collin

Puss in Boots 2011 - Review by Twitch Film

Puss in Boots 2011 - Review by Twitch Film

fter being milked as second banana to a farting ogre in what seems like umpteen "Shrek" movies, Antonio Banderas' popular Puss in Boots has strayed into a movie of his own. Considering how that franchise has supposedly come to a close, this spin-off is, yes, a crassly commercial method of Dreamworks Animation continuing to generate green from green. But there's a good reason the cat came back to the silver screen in a film all his own as opposed to, say, The Gingerbread Man, Donkey, or Princess Fiona.

Puss in Boots is part Eastwood-ian Man With No Name, part Latin lothario, but all cat. Early in the film, we witness our dashing lead character in action as he coolly takes command of a bar stocked with looming louts and thick-necked thugs. Self-satisfied, he struts out into the night, only to be confronted with an old world equivalent of a zippy laser pointer beam - one with his name on it! And just like that, all that cool warriors' self-assuredness falls away as Puss instantly becomes nothing but what he's been all along - a cat. In this case, a cat frantically trying to catch an uncatchable beam of light - an uncontrollable compulsion for any feline, real or computer animated.

And there you have it, the primary universal joke of the character. His very essence, his very being, is his weakness. Puss in Boots, for all his valiant swaggering and swashbuckling, can be, on the fly, reduced to a common house cat. It is at once simple, obvious, hilarious, clever and universally relatable. After all, who among us has not been done in on occasion by the flaws of our own intrinsic humanity? This is the fundamental concept/conceit at the heart of Puss in Boots, and the key to any continuing viability and appeal of the character. Thankfully, it's something that this movie (boasting executive production credits for Guillermo del Toro and Andrew Adamson, among others) is smart enough to run with.

"Puss in Boots" falls just short of the original "Shrek" in terms of overall solidity, but avoids the pit of pop culture reference overload that the franchise fell into with the admittedly fun "Shrek 2", and never climbed out of. It's sharp and witty enough for adults and children to enjoy alike, even if the comedy takes a backseat to a barrage of nursery rhymed action movie tropes in the final reel. (And there's at least one joke for grown-ups (a quick, veiled pot joke) that may cause parents to squirm just a little.) It's an uneven film that gets off to a great start only to be sidetracked by a lengthy flashback sequence. I've seen it happen to worse movies, ones that couldn't boast such wonderfully plush and colorful animation.

Banderas dominates as Puss in Boots, a character who's skin he lives in quite comfortably. It's a perhaps rare pay-off to Dreamworks Animation's troubling tendency to stock their films with celebrity vocal talent, many of whom have no business being within fifty feet of that recording booth. (We're looking at you Cameron Diaz.) The same compliment, however, cannot be said of female lead Salma Hayek, who, for the first time in her career, is completely flat. No joke, she cannot deliver a joke. On the other hand, professional jokester Zach Galifianakis (in an almost joke-free part) does a respectable job as the dubious Humpty Dumpty, whose great fall was more of a moral one in this universe. Even executive producer del Toro gets in on the action, voicing the important but smaller part of the mustached Comandate.

After stinking up the litter box with a lot of crap features in the past decade, Dreamworks Animation seems to have finally landed on its feet this year, as evidenced by this film and the even better "Kung Fu Panda 2". They're still not in the league of Pixar, but this is credit given where credit is due. "Puss in Boots" is an exciting and clever ball of yarn, even as it makes absolutely no attempt to even resemble the French fairy tale it takes its name from. But it also has the good sense to avoid any gratuitous cameos from other "Shrek" characters, thus allowing "Puss" to stand on it's own two legs as much as possible. It's not purr-fect, but it's also not mangy.

by Jim Tudor / ref: http://twitchfilm.com