Puss In Boots

The film opens with Puss crawling out of the boudoir of another cat, though not only is Puss (Antonio Banderas) gaining a reputation with the kitties, he’s become an outlaw. He’s a wanted cat with a price on his head.

One night in a bar he hears that Jack and Jill, murderous outlaws obviously, are in town and in possession of the fabled magic beans that they have stolen from another Jack (he of the beanstalk) who’s in jail. You may already be spotting here that the story is not exactly faithful to the original Puss in Boots story but some hybrid collaboration of fairytales.

Puss wants those beans but is thwarted when he tries to get them by a fellow feline in a kinky mask. This is Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) - master thief, useful with a sword, on the dance floor and potential love interest.

Unfortunately Kitty is working for Humpty 'Alexander' Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis). I kid you not. I kind of lost it at this point and spent the rest of the film wondering why it had a giant egg in it. Though, I guess, once you base a film on a talking cat, it isn’t much of a stretch to include a talking egg as well... but Humpty Dumpty? Oh my.

Hump and Kit want Puss to help them get the beans but he wants nothing to do with them. Well not with Humpty anyway; the over-sized egg had betrayed him once before and clearly he doesn’t wish to end up with egg on his face again. Kitty on the other hand... flutters her eyelashes and... oh, ok then. He’ll do it to try and restore his good name. Puss was once in an orphanage before being taken in by a kind-hearted woman called Imelda. While living with her he gained the trust and respect of the whole town before it all went wrong thanks to the egg.

So they steal the beans and plant them at a ‘special’ spot from which sprouts a beanstalk to the heavens. All they now have to do is shin up to the Giant's castle which lies at the top and grab the goose that lays the golden eggs. Sound familiar? I’m not sure how Puss thinks that snatching a baby goose from its mother will restore his good name but anyway. At least they’ll all be rich, maybe. Maybe not.

I went into this film with very mild expectations, they were not exceeded. Puss himself was quite good but he was clearly working with a very amateur supporting cast and as for the scriptwriter, oh dear. Some of the cat jokes are clever but it’s not enough to save a very lazy plot. It’s a family film obviously but I think as a child it would have bored me. Years ago, this was the sort of thing that would have been a mere TV series, shown at 4pm on the BBC’s Children’s slot. Definitely not put on the big screen. It’s certainly not a classic that they’ll be dragging out to reshow year after year. Could have been a lot better.