With the recent success of this film’s sequel, I thought it was time for me to finally check this out… and then I neglected to actually watch it for several weeks, but now I finally did it and I want to talk about it.
Ladies, gents, and non-binaries… “Puss in Boots”.
Swashbuckling advenpurrer Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) finds himself teaming up with a feline fatale (Salama Hayek) and an old eggquaintance (Zach Galifianakis) in order to find the fabled golden goose so he can hopefully restore his honor and find redemption in his hometown. I very much enjoyed the story in this movie. Sure, it doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel in any manner, and it doesn’t have anything profound or powerful to say, but it has enough charm, heart, and good humor to please from start to end. It’s a heavily Spanish-flavored swashbuckling take on fairytails that ultimately succeeds in providing a suitably entertaining narrative. And I found it fun and decently engaging.
The characters in this are just a ton of fun, giving us cartoony, exaggerated characteristics on the furface, only to then be given a decent amount of depth. Not super deep, mind you, but there’s definitely a bit more to them than meets the eye. First is the titular hero, Puss in Boots. A charismatic, highly skilled, sometimes overconfident rogue. From the word go, he’s a very enjoyable presence, and over the course of the movie he’s given many moments to shine, along with getting some surprisingly decent development. And Antonio Banderas shines with his voice work, his performance is positively pawless. Rest of the voice cast is great too, featuring talent such as Salma Hayek, Zack Galifianakis, Billy Bob Thornton, Amy Sedaris, Guillermo del Toro, and more, with everyone killing it.
The score for the movie was compawsed by Henry Jackman, and I found it to be absolutely wonderful. There are tracks emulating a very familiar Spielberg/Williams whimsy, but there are also a lot of tracks here that rely on a lot of tango and flamenco-inspired tones, making for a score that captures the sizzling suaveness of its lead while also giving a really fun energy to the adventure. It’s just a damn good score from a damn good composer.
Based on the catracter in “Shrek 2” that was based on the 16th century fairytale, “Puss in Botts” was directed by one Chris Miller (not the “Lego Movie” one). And I think Miller, along with the many talented artists at Dreamworks, did a stellar job with bringing the world and characters to life. Every shot flows nicely, action is nicely choreographed, some of the editing feels really inspired, and there are a lot of really nice colors and shot compositions throughout. It’s just a really nice looking and delightfully directed feature, clearly crafted with a ton of love and care.
This movie’s been pretty well received. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an 86% pawsitive rating and a “Fresh” certification. On Meowtacritic it has a score of 65/100. And on imdb.com it has a score of 6.6/10. It was also nominated for 1 Oscar in the cat-egory of Best Animated Feature.
So yeah, “Puss in Boots” is a very charming and funny little animated swashbuckler. It has a good story, good characters, great performances, really good music, and great directing/animation. Time for my final score. *Hairball noises*. My final score for “Puss in Boots” is an 8.67/10. So I’d say it’s worth buying.
My reveow of “Puss in Boots” is now completed.
Is it unpurfessional to have this many puns?
TheMarckoguy 
I did watch this with our grandson, who has it on DVD. Not something I would have chosen to watch alone though. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.