Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
A mishmash of characters and themes collide in a chaotic, frenetic sequel which is like experiencing a deeply disturbing waking dream.
Courtesy of DreamWorks Animation, Universal Pictures
There is only one wish and everybody wants a piece of it. There’s Puss in Boots himself (voiced by Antonio Banderas), now clinging onto his final, ninth life and being ruthlessly stalked by the Grim Reaper (a Big Bad Wolf, don’t you know?). There’s Puss’s fellow cat fighter Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek Pinault, formerly Salma Hayek), still smarting from having been deserted by him in the last film. Then there is – and this is beginning to sound silly – Goldilocks and The Three Bears, now a tight family unit bonded by their love of crime. Thievery is the clan’s main kick and Goldilocks is the worst, having stolen the bears’ hearts (gamely voiced by Florence Pugh, with Ray Winstone as Papa Bear and Olivia Colman as Mama Bear). Finally, there is Jack Horner (John Mulaney), a grotesque creation being neither “little” nor “a good boy”, having transmogrified into a homicidal giant. And if we haven’t been treated to Jiminy Cricket enough in the last three years, we now have a parody of the insect who mimics James Stewart and acts (unsuccessfully) as Jack Horner’s conscience.
All these strange creatures are after the same eponymous wish, which is to be granted by an elusive Wishing Star located on a magical map. And so the map repeatedly changes hands as the various principals enter a parallel universe known as the Dark Forest and which alters depending on who is in possession of the map. They all want the wish for their own selfish ends, with Puss in Boots hoping that it will be able to restore his nine lives. And so it goes…
It's become a trend of late to cherry-pick famous characters and to cram them all into a single movie, a development encouraged by the success of Shrek which jostled the likes of Prince Charming, Pinocchio and Robin Hood. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is the latest chapter in the Shrek franchise, giving it some licence to pinch from Lewis Carroll, Robert Southey, Arthurian legend, and the like. However, such a free rein leads to a scattershot shambles, defying a logical through-line. Within a prescribed context, as employed by Ready Player One, Ralph Breaks the Internet and the Toy Story films, this works a treat. But the multiversal liberties adopted by The Last Wish result in a slipshod anything-goes experience akin to experiencing an LSD trip, and not a good one.
Yet, even while pandering to the ADHD attention span of current audiences, Puss in Boots is eager to ladle on a big dollop of morality at the end just to prove that its heart is in the right place. Considering how animation is currently re-inventing itself, with such bold examples as Turning Red and Strange World, it seems baffling that the American Academy chose to shortlist this charmless chaos for an Oscar nomination. If I had one wish, it would be to know that this is the last Puss in Boots this century.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Voices of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek Pinault, Harvey Guillén, Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone, Samson Kayo, John Mulaney, Wagner Moura, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Anthony Mendez, Kevin McCann, Bernardo De Paula.
Dir Joel Crawford, Pro Mark Swift, Screenplay Paul Fisher and Tommy Swerdlow, Pro Des Nate Wragg, Ed James Ryan, Music Heitor Pereira, Sound Jason W. Jennings and Tim Walston.
DreamWorks Animation-Universal Pictures.
102 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 21 December 2022. UK Rel: 3 February 2023. Cert. PG.
