Puss in Boots: Last Wish movie review: 2022’s most unexpected triumph

Moviegoers shouldn’t should depend on a sequel to a Shrek spinoff from 11 years in the past to find dazzling spectacle, however right here we’re. Simply days after Avatar: The Means of Water finessed and stretched the photoreal CG language of James Cameron’s unique to better heights (depths?), a frickin’ Puss in Boots film swings the motion pendulum in the exact opposite stylistic course, whereas remaining on Cameron’s audacious wavelength. Puss in Boots: The Final Want, the most recent DreamWorks Animation movie, steals mercilessly from the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse playbook, and you realize what, thank god for it — the result’s a fairy story journey that enhances real laughs with splashy, impressionistic artwork.

I’ve completely no reminiscence of what occurred in 2011’s Puss in Boots, nor the Netflix present The Adventures of Puss in Boots, however am completely satisfied to report a scarcity of Puss data didn’t negatively impression my time watching an Antonio Banderas-voiced cat scurry round along with his sword. After we decide up with Puss, he’s a milk-drunk legend realizing he’s wasted eight of his 9 lives. Wolf, a bodily manifestation of loss of life who wields two scythes and is voiced by Narcos’ Wagner Moura, couldn’t be happier — all he needs is to chop down the boastful feline as he begs for mercy. However when Puss catches wind of a fallen star able to granting a want, he units off with Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and a tiny canine named Perrito (What We Do within the Shadows’ Harvey Guillén) to grab the chance. On his fluffy tail are Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and her Three Bears Crime Household, and the Shrek-verse’s model of the Collector, “Large” Jack Horner (John Mulaney), who additionally need the star.

Talks of a Puss in Boots 2 started simply after the primary film’s success. Govt producer Guillermo del Toro teased in 2012 {that a} script was already within the works, and by 2014, Banderas was making guarantees in regards to the character’s return — presumably alongside Shrek. None of this got here to go, and DreamWorks noticed creative-team shakeups. Ultimately Joel Crawford (The Croods: A New Age) stepped in to helm the film, with Januel Mercado as co-director, with the MO of utterly rethinking what a CG-animated film needed to seem like at DreamWorks.

Picture: DreamWorks Animation

“When the Shrek motion pictures got here out, CG animation was in an fascinating house,” Final Want manufacturing designer Nate Wragg lately instructed Animation Journal. “A part of the spectacle of it was, ‘Wow it seems so actual, regardless that it’s not. Look what the pc can do.’ We’ve now been capable of swing the pendulum again into an area the place animation originated, which was a creative expression. Bambi’s backgrounds had been watercolored. It was lovely however it didn’t should be photoreal.”

As an animation fan, this has been a very long time coming. Spider-verse’s arrival in 2018 felt like a bullet-speed pebble lodging itself within the windshield of mainstream Western animation. The cracks had been quick, and between DreamWorks’ The Unhealthy Guys, Netflix’s Arcane, and Pixar’s upcoming Elemental, the foundations could be totally shattered. Puss in Boots: The Final Want giving the crude Shrek franchise a facelift in each conceivable approach is a motive to hope.

The Final Want is the closest I’ve ever seen a film get to emulating hand-painted idea artwork. On their option to the wishing star, Puss and firm traverse prismatic backdrops — from vibrant pinks and inexperienced forests to the country interiors of a cat-lady jail — that really feel dabbed on by the inventive group. Their encounters with beasties use colour, linework, and kinetic digicam strikes to carry viewers deeper into the battles, and like The Means of Water, repeatedly shift body charges to jolt the senses. Puss, wanting extra oil-painted than ever, could also be monologuing about his legendary expertise one second, animated “on those,” then discover himself in a cacophonous skirmish with a towering troll the subsequent, which the group animates “on the twos.” The feeling builds on the work of Spider-verse and drags the Shrek franchise, of all issues, into the territory of excessive artwork. It’s gorgeous.

Picture: DreamWorks Animation

The film’s additionally actually humorous? Having lately revisited Shrek 1 and Shrek 2, I can’t say I walked into The Final Want with an open coronary heart/humorous bone — popular culture hijinks and fairy-tale riffs had been dusty then and petrified now. The Final Want group, together with credited screenwriters Paul Fisher and Tommy Swerdlow, reinvent the humor similar to the animation. Whereas the film presents a couple of nostalgic nods to Shrek, with transient appearances by Gingerbread Man and Pinocchio, and Jack Horner’s countless provide of fantasy literature collectibles provides Mulaney loads of joke gasoline, the film’s comedy stylings extra carefully resemble Groundhog Day. Banderas, it seems, can do the Invoice Murray mumbles-to-self one-liner factor. A recurring bit finds Puss reliving his previous deaths, and the variations of himself (Showman Puss, Swole Puss, Drunk Puss) that led to every demise. On this sequel, a considerably compulsory poop joke is definitely a litter field joke about Puss faking his personal loss of life and “burying” his physique. Good!

The Final Want may simply be the very best factor DreamWorks Animation, a studio that isn’t as identified for pushing the bounds of the medium, has produced within the final decade. 2010 gave us the emotional thrillride of Learn how to Practice Your Dragon and 2011 had Kung Fu Panda 2, a martial arts odyssey bursting with creativeness that asserted director Jennifer Yuh Nelson as a top-tier motion director (even when Hollywood by no means made good on it). Perhaps Learn how to Practice Your Dragon 2 tops the unique with greater motion — I’ll depart that to the hardcore followers. The Unhealthy Guys was positively a step in the precise technological course earlier this 12 months. I can’t be participating with Boss Child discourse.

Regardless of the case, the achievement glimmers with hope. DreamWorks Animation, a studio that has bounced from varied houses, by no means discovered its footing in opposition to Pixar, and struggled within the shadow of the Minions, might have discovered a brand new mode. If this stage of artistry and cleverness is what the studio brings to future movies, hell, I’ll get in line for Shrek 5. There’s a lot animation can do, and Hollywood lastly appears able to grant its artists permission to do it.

Puss in Boots: The Final Want is now in theaters