Australia's Best Movie Magazine

Film reviews

Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

search the site

Enter search term:

newsletter

Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter

Enter search term:

Puss In Boots 3D (Film)

by Annette Basile | December 05, 2011 12:40 | Edited December 05, 2011 12:46

Antonio Banderas is as inspired as ever voicing the titular feline, but the story feels recycled and soon loses its momentum and kick.

Here, DreamWorks Animation put storytelling a distant second to pretty pictures. While they've produced extraordinary work, Puss In Boots - despite a sensational Antonio Banderas voicing the character of the misunderstood outlaw feline - saunters when it should soar.

 

It begins with promise - and plenty of laughs. But the laughs (largely aimed at adults) peter out and the story soon loses momentum and inspiration. A kind of prequel to Shrek - this is Puss's life before he met the great green one - it's another cut and paste, using displaced fairytale and nursery rhyme characters to tell the tale of Puss and his frenemy Humpty Alexander Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis). Along with Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) they go on an alleged adventure that borrows from the tale of Jack & The Beanstalk, with a dash of Jack & Jill in the form of a rather dastardly duo (hilariously voiced by Billy Bob Thorton and Amy Sedaris).

 

Banderas infuses humour into almost every word - he and his character are a joy. Hayek is also fun as the feline of his dreams. The talking egg, however, is problematic. Unlikable, untrustworthy and uncomfortable to watch, Humpy Dumpty, a main character, is irritating - as are the overkill egg jokes. This story begins with Puss arriving at an inn, where he encounters the said egg. But these two go way back, and an initially entertaining narrative gets bogged down by the egg/cat history and never really recovers. There's impressive animation, especially in the final scenes, but this is not a film that pulls you in. You watch the stunning visuals from a detached distance.

 

It's not that it has no entertainment value - it does. But this is not fresh. The fairytale mashup was novel and clever in the first Shrek film, but here it's lost its gloss.

 

DreamWorks don't always get it right, like with 2010's so-so Megamind, for example. But they've also done supreme work recently - How To Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda 2 were films that left you on a high.

 

And that's where Puss In Boots fails - it has its merits but it doesn't take you anywhere.