‘You have made the cat angry. You do not want to make the cat angry…’
Shrek was such a humongous worldwide hit that it produced not only two sequels but also several spin-offs across various mediums. Perhaps the most renowned of these is Chris Miller’s Puss in Boots. Why am I watching a decade-old Shrek spin-off, I hear you ask? Well, I have a six-month-old daughter. And while she spent most of the film playing with a rubber giraffe, I’m sure that watching Puss in Boots was a formative experience for her.
Serving as an origin story for the titular kitty, Puss in Boots presents us with the story of our feline hero and his attempts to find some magic beans to then also find the golden goose to save some village or something. Jack and Jill are there. Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) serves as both ally and antagonist. Salma Hayek also appears as love interest Kitty Softpaws.
I’d heard good things about Puss in Boots and while watching it in fifteen-minute increments in between changing nappies and naptimes (and that’s just me) is perhaps not the optimum viewing conditions for any film, it is also true that this particular trifle failed to hold my interest. It has some nice cat-based humour and Galifianakis manages to bring some real humanity and nuance to an egg with legs, but overall, this is probably a great kid’s film but it doesn’t have enough for adults. Which is fine until you compare it to other films in the Dreamworks roster. The Wild Robot this ain’t.
