The other swashbuckling shoe is about to drop when Puss in Boots: The Last Wish brings Shrek’s debonaire feline friend back to the big screen. In theaters this Wednesday, December 21, the DreamWorks Animation sequel may find Puss in Boots down eight of his nine lives, but critics tend to agree that the fan-favorite character is definitely still kicking.
Boasting a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (from 44 reviews) and a 75 on Metacritic (seven reviews), critics are purring about the film’s departure for hair-by-hair photoreal CGI in favor of an energetic, experimental, storybook look as well as the family flick’s daring venture into existential territory. Of course, the Shrek-worthy hilarity punched up by writers Paul Fisher and Tommy Swerdlow and delivered by an exceptional voice cast doesn’t hurt!
Directed by Joel Crawford (The Croods: A New Age) and starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Harvey Guillén, Florence Pugh, John Mulaney and Wagner Moura, here’s what critics are saying about Puss in Boots: The Last Wish:
“It’s a pleasant surprise that Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is for the most part winning. It contains amusing jokes and has an old-fashioned impulse to tug at heart strings. Directed by Joel Crawford, the movie’s overall tone harks back not so much to prior DreamWorks pictures as it does to the Fractured Fairy Tales of the old TV cartoon Rocky and Bullwinkle. To this end, Goldilocks and the Three Bears are now a band of criminals (including voice work by the powerhouses Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone and Florence Pugh). This often charming movie will play particularly well if you’re a cat person. But who’s not?” — Glenn Kenny, The New York Times
“The movie feels most inspired in its first half-hour, when Puss get shaken out of his comfort zone, which is accompanied by a huge shift in visual style for a DreamWorks toon: Eschewing traditional CG codes, production designer Nate Wragg aims for an expressionistic storybook feel, with no lines and a refreshing rejection of photorealistic detail.” — Peter Debruge, Variety
“Perhaps what makes The Last Wish a cut above the rest is the deftness with which it eases the audience into the Lesson of the Day format of most animated children’s movies. Ultimately, Puss’s desire to be free from death keeps him from enjoying his life — a somewhat darker concept than one usually finds in children’s media … It never, however, plasters whatever it has to say all over the screen, allowing story beats to unfold naturally and in surprising ways.” — Emma Stefansky, IndieWire
“Darker in tone but still extremely funny, the film, like so many of its animated brethren, falters when resorting to the frenetic action sequences seemingly designed for tykes’ short attention spans. Those exhausting episodes pale in comparison to such uproarious scenes as a saucer-eyed feline face-off in which Puss attempts to prove he’s the most adorable.” — Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
“With its multiple antagonists, constant scene hopping, and rapid-fire action set pieces, The Last Wish is certainly busy … But there’s so many witty throwaway gags, so much texture and detail in the film’s visual palette and such exuberance in the performances —Banderas in particular seems to be having a blast tweaking his brooding lothario persona — it’s hard to care too much.” — Keith Watson, Slant
“The jokes are plentiful, and it’s one of the funniest movies of the year, but it is the strong emotional core that holds the movie together. In a time when many sequels fail to live up to their potential by just attempting to recreate what their predecessors did so well, The Last Wish aims to do something different and one that shows a hopeful future for DreamWorks.” — Nate Richard, Collider
