AC22: Random Movie Review - Puss in Boots

Earlier this month, I spoke of spin-off films that DreamWorks do and all I can say is that unlike Disney and Pixar, they are making spin-offs to good films that deserve to have spin-offs. In this case, its Shrek. The film which despite not being DreamWorks' first animated film, was the film that really got their animation division going and its known to have some great characters in it, one of them being Puss in Boots. The Zorro like cat who is always up for a fight as well as taking the position of annoying talking animals. So let's take a look in his first starring film:

Its not clear where this takes place in the Shrek universe so just for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume it happens well before Puss meets Shrek. So Puss in Boots (reprised by the great Spanish actor who speaks very good English, Antonio Banderas) has been spending years on the run as an outlaw, but his luck soon changes when he comes across Jack and Jill (voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Gollom himself, Andy Serkis. Its not clear as to who voices who in this regard) who seem to have some magic beans, something of which Puss has been spending most of his life in finding. He attempts to steal them, but a female cat gets in his way. This cat is allied with an old friend of Puss and together, they track down the beans and fulfil Puss's wishes to find gold with Puss blissfully unaware that there is a traitor in the midst.

So learning that this film was directed by the one that did Shrek the Third, made me a bit nervous on what to expect here as that film was not a great film in the main series. But I then learned that the executive producer was none other than Guillermo del Toro so I felt much calmer after that and had a watch and to be honest, its actually pretty good. Its one of these spin-off films that is able to stand on its own ground and while it still does try to use the formula of putting in fairytale characters in a situation much like with the main series, its done in a way that makes it different to how its done in Shrek which is great. Its funny, action packed and well animated in parts. 9/10