By Tommy Bond, Film Critic
Puss in Boots
DreamWorks just has to keep milking the Shrek franchise for everything that it’s worth, don’t they? We all loved the first Shrek, filled to the brim with smart pop-culture references and adult innuendos galore! The second one was still clever, the third felt tired, and the fourth just sucked. So what do they do? They drop Shrek n’ friends and instead give the swashbuckling fur-ball named Puss in Boots (voiced by Antonio Banderas) a film all of his own. Hmm, I can’t say it’s much of an improvement for the franchise.
While a chunk of Puss in Boots is spent explaining Puss’s Hispanic origins, much of the film centers around the story of restoring his home town to its former glory by embarking on one last quest, with a sexy cat-thief named Kitty Softpaws and Humpty A. Dumpty, who did in fact survive his great fall, and was indeed put back together again. The trio is after three magical beans that will produce an enchanted beanstalk to the sky, where a golden-egg-laying goose can be found. The beans are in the possession of Jack and Jill, who are fat, disgusting hillbillies with a desire to start a family of their own. A family of mini-warthog babies from hell. Yeah, not the Jack and Jill I remember from my childhood nursery rhymes, but hasn’t that always been part of the humor in these films, that not everything is ever as it seems when it comes to our beloved fairy tales?
Much of that humor is still intact here, and there are various sight gags and physical comedy that will certainly draw a laugh from kiddo and adult alike. But wasn’t it always the near-inappropriate innuendos and sexually charged banter that made the earlyShrek films so great, that elevated the first film to winning the Oscar for Best Animated Film? (Take that Pixar). Adults laughed because they got it, and the little ones laughed just because Donkey looked funny. Well, that comedy is all but gone here, with DreamWorks obviously targeting a much younger, narrower audience. It’s a shame really. The closest we get to more mature humor is when a tattooed bar-patron tells a legend through the various tattoos on his body. He is stopped before he shows us his “golden eggs”.
The variety of characters has always made these films so endearing. A Hispanic sword-fighting cat taking sides with a fast-talking Donkey from the fairytale equivalent of Brooklyn, NY is funny in and of itself. A Hispanic sword-fighting cat in a Hispanic town is not nearly as entertaining or intriguing.
Which is probably why this film wasn’t nearly as entertaining or intriguing as the films that inspired it.
And most disappointing of all? Shrek and Donkey don’t make a cameo. Not even once.
Rated PG for some adventure action and mild rude humor.
Running Time: 90 Minutes.
Released in theatres: October 28th, 2011.
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