It is perhaps laborious to imagine it right this moment, however there was a time when “Shrek” appeared like a breath of contemporary air on the planet of big-screen animation. Its salty humor and insistent popular culture knowingness was enjoyable for a minute, earlier than the sequels received nudging and formulaic. After which there was the entire shoving-Smash Mouth-down-our-throat challenge. DreamWorks, the studio that concocted “Shrek,” quickly sufficient turned the anti-Pixar — in a nasty method.
So it’s a pleasing shock that “Puss in Boots: The Final Want,” the second characteristic movie highlighting a beloved kids’s lit character who turned one of many favourite additions to the “Shrek” universe, is for essentially the most half successful. It accommodates amusing jokes and has an old style impulse to tug at coronary heart strings. This despite the video-game-suggestive plot development, by which Puss and cohorts, aided by an animated map, race to a darkish forest to discover a wishing star, with different kids’s lore characters in sizzling, malevolent pursuit.
Puss is voiced by Antonio Banderas, whose purr can heat the cockles of any and all, as can also be the case with Salma Hayek Pinault, who performs his love-and-hate curiosity Kitty Softpaws. Directed by Joel Crawford, the film’s general tone harks again not a lot to prior DreamWorks photos because it does to the “Fractured Fairy Tales” of the previous TV cartoon “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” To this finish, Goldilocks and the Three Bears are actually a band of criminals (together with voice work by the powerhouses Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone and Florence Pugh). This usually charming film will play notably effectively should you’re a cat individual. However who’s not?
Puss in Boots: The Final Want
Rated PG. Operating time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.