I really don’t think we talk enough about how good DreamWorks can be when it comes to making sequels for their most successful franchises. Sure, follow-ups like Trolls: World Tour and The Croods: A New Age were nothing to write home about but they are able to deliver strong sequels when they matter the most. Shrek 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, How To Train Your Dragon 2! All Part Twos that manages to be as good if not better than their already impressive predecessors. Those were all installments that were able to expand upon their respective franchises in interesting ways to make them animated classics! Even Madagascar 2: Escape To Africa was a pretty good sequel to what was mostly a pretty good first film in the original Madagascar as well. And with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, I don’t think it would be crazy to consider DreamWorks to be one of the better animation studios out there when it comes to delivering absolutely banger sequels where other studios tend to fall flat.
Plot Synopsis: Taking place after the events of Shrek: Forever After and the first movie, Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) continues his stride as hero/fugitive of San Ricardo. After engaging in battle with a giant monster, he is accidentally killed by a bell that was dropped on him. Waking up at his doctor’s office, Puss is notified that he has now lost eight of his nine lives and has only one of them remaining. Once he gets into a match with a deadly bounty hunter that happens to be a wolf (Wagner Moura) and suffers humiliating defeat, the mighty cat believes that it’s no longer worth risking his last life as a fighter. It’s then Puss decides to hang up the cape and hat and heads off to be a personal cat for Mama Luna (Da’Vine Jay Randolph).
As he settles in his new cat life, including meeting a new therapy dog named Perrito (Harvey Guillen), new enemies emerges such as Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and her three bears (Olivia Coleman, Ray Winstone, and Samson Kayo) who arrive to find him as the deadly wolf that Puss had an encounter with put a bounty on his head. It’s upon their arrival that he discovers a thing known as the Mystical Last Wish, something that Puss believes can help him restore all nine of his lives. With the help of his former counterpart, Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and his new counterpart, Perrito, Puss must out of his brief retirement and embark on a journey to claim the mystical wishing star before any of his foes do.
Puss in Boots has always been a side character with unlimited potential for engaging stories of his own. While he mostly acts as comic relief in the Shrek movies, he still does have an interesting backstory of his own and an unique presence onscreen that you could see him carrying his own movie without the worry of not having enough Mike Myers or Eddie Murphy thrown into the mix. The first film showcased that just fine but The Last Wish does it even better. Not only because it’s well made with beautiful animation, entertaining action, intriguing lore, and having a handful of laughs, but the dark angle and engaging direction it goes with the character of Puss in Boots.
The whole “nine lives” for cats thing are usually treated as a myth in movies but here, it not only plays it as it’s real but it helps enrich the development that Puss goes through, with the cat in boots coming to the realization of how many lives he has simply threw away and may never get back. While he had remained strong as an independent fighter who concurred plenty of his foes, that was mostly in the mindset that he still had plenty of extras lives to work with if he had failed. You get killed by your enemies, you can just hit the restart button and try again. Now that he no longer has any more green Mario mushrooms to work with, he can’t take any more lives for granted. And if he is unable to do that, then is he really Puss in Boots that he has built in his infamous legacy or is he just simply an adorable little kitty? That is the ringing question that looms throughout The Last Wish which helps makes the adventure that Puss and his companions go through all the more compelling.
The thing I imagine most will be surprised by with The Last Wish is just how far it goes with it’s dark subject matter involving Puss in Boot’s potential death on the rise. While we see Puss making plenty of wisecracks along the way with Prietto and Kitty, you can tell he’s doing it in a way that comes across as a defense mechanism. Trying to hide that dark, glooming, fearful thought that he may actually die for real if he fails his mission. And if he does die, did he end up living the life he wanted to live with the ones he deep down cares about or would he had been better off as simply a normal house cat? It makes for a nice commentary on not taking life and the ones you love for granted by always remembering to cherish every beautiful moment you have because one day, it will all be gone.
The biggest aspect of the movie that stands out greatly is the animation style. Just like with this year’s The Bad Guys, DreamWorks has taken obvious inspiration for the animation style of their newest movies from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The kind of style that allows for beautiful, colorful storybook illustrations to help better tell their story, give characters more expressions, and make some well-choreographed, energetic action set pieces. Instead of sticking with the more realistic style like the first one did by simply translating that same style from the Shrek movies, this one puts more focus on a painterly style design to give the film it’s more “fairy-tale”-like feel that it’s suppose to have with a Puss in Boots adventure. And holy smokes, does this animation style fit perfectly within this movie. If this is the kind of direction that DreamWorks hopes to take after this film, then I am more than onboard for it.
The rest of the technical aspects are absolutely stellar as well. The characters themselves look great and blend in perfectly with the animation, save for some cameos that may or may not involve certain characters from another certain franchise that Puss in Boots may or may not have been involved in. Editor James Ryan does a solid job of holding the whole picture together without it being a sore to the eyes. The score from Heitor Pereira is astonishingly superb with beautiful fitting music throughout that are catchy but also soothing. For an animated flick like this, I don’t think you could have asked for a better looking or better sounding movie than what The Last Wish provides.
The voice cast is a nice mix of known talent of old and new. Antonio Banderas is as perfect as Puss in Boots as he’s ever been, especially here where he gets to play a deeper, more complex version of the lovable misfit kitty cat. Salma Hayek works even better here as Kitty than she did in the first movie, being the perfect counterpart to Puss as she makes him question how he views lives and being around the ones he loves. Harvey Guillen does make for a somewhat annoying impression as Perrito at the start but grows on you the more he is on screen making for the right comic relief to have thrown into the mix with what is a personal story of life and death. Florence Pugh fits well as Goldilocks as an antagonist with real human motivations to want to retrieve the wishing star involving family matters, even if her accent is becoming a bit more obvious as time goes on. Olivia Colman, Ray Winestone, and Samson Kayo are all recognizable but functional as their bear counterparts and Goldilock’s lone family.
Arguably the biggest standout in terms of the new characters is with the main antagonists of John Mulaney as Jack Horner and Wagner Moura as Big Bad Wolf. Jack Horner just for the fact that’s is refreshing to have a bad guy that is straight to the point with his badness and is beyond evil for no reason whatsoever other than that’s just who he is, which has Mulaney clearly having the time of his life playing this character. And the Big Bad Wolf for the fact that he is easily one of the more intimidating and threatening villains in recent memory, aided greatly by Moura’s dry and menacing performance which helps make for easily the deadliest foe that Puss has ever encountered.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is an exciting, triumphing sequel to go along with the other superb sequel that DreamWorks animation has created with their filmography. Even the tiny nitpicks I have such as the very final scene being a bit of an eye roller can’t bring down the film in any way. The animation is spectacular, the characters are engaging, the set pieces are exhilarating and inventive, the story goes into dark places you wouldn’t expect a simple “kids” movie would go, and it teaches a very valuable lesson on how we should live our life to the fullest with the ones we love before it’s too late. It’s one of the best animated films of the year, it’s one of the best films of the year period, and is definitely worth checking out in theaters once it releases next month.
We can only hope that DreamWorks will pull a Madagascar 3 with Trolls 3 being the best of the trilogy and Kung Fu Panda 4 will follow the Toy Story 4 trope of at least being good albeit unnecessary, matching it for perhaps the best animated quadrilogy yet. Perhaps then, people will start giving them the credit they deserve and not just pure scorn for their missteps. Even so, great sequels to their most well-known franchises have already been made and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish joins the list of those with grace!
Other comments:
- Fair warning to parents of younger children, there is some mild swearing in the movie and censoring of major swearing in the picture. If you have kids that haven’t been on the internet yet, then you might want to avoid this unless you want your kids to be asking questions to you afterwards what the “bleeping” sound was for.
- The new DreamWorks logo did play in my showing and I was fine with it. It’s only like 30 seconds long and looks even better on the big screen. I don’t understand the outrage over it whatsoever. Could have used a bit more Madagascar and Megamind in it and less Boss Baby though.
- If this is unable to make a profit because it didn’t have enough theater showings due to Avatar: The Way of Water, then James Cameron must pay!
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