Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
While it’s easy to roll one’s eyes and groan “DreamWorks is still on the Shrek train?”, I’m pleased to say that Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and its titular orange tabby are not too shabby. Eleven years after the original Puss in Boots spinoff (I could swear there was already a sequel, but maybe it’s that The Adventures of Puss in Boots series that I never bothered to watch that I was thinking of), The Last Wish is a darker DreamWorks affair (but not overly so: there are still some pee and poo jokes for the younglings to giggle at, I suppose). Puss is older in age and now down to his last of his nine lives. He went from carelessly living on the edge to now being overly protective of himself. He is hunted by Goldilocks and the three bears (don’t you know they’re in cahoots now): they want him to steal a map that will guide them to the Wishing Star that grants one sole wish to the first person to find it. Puss has to con little Jack Horner, who is now a gigantic bully that doesn’t care if his own lackeys die. Wow. Little Kitty Softpaws (from the first film) is back to try and take on the same mission that Puss is on.
Through this all, Puss is being stalked by a cloak-bearing wolf that represents death, as he is vowing to cut Puss’ final life early (he mainly wants to have a battle with the fearless Puss, especially to see what a potentially fatal showdown would look like). Death’s entrances into each scene-stealing moment act as wonderful deviations from the overall quest, especially since we get reminded again and again of how there are actual stakes at play here (well, this is a family film from DreamWorks, so nothing too risky can ever happen, but it’s nice to actually feel like something could go wrong at any second for our hero). Balancing out this yin and yang between dark and light is a new character named… well… something. He gets called Perrito because he is an abandoned puppy that is mistreated by all that find him, and so he begins the film pretending he is a cat (as to fit in nicely within the same cat lady’s house that Puss initially retreats to in hiding).
So we have Puss, Kitty, and “Perrito” acting as a team to try and find the Wishing Star (once Puss and Kitty mutually agree to keep the map for themselves), with Goldilocks and her heavily British gang of bears, and Jack Horner and his posse following behind. If it wasn’t clear from the get-go with the freeze-frames and titles being stretched across the screen whenever characters would be introduced, The Last Wish is actually hugely indebted to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, down to the quest of three different (sets of) characters chasing after the same goal and thwarting each other in the process (I won’t say much about the climax as to avoid spoilers, but if you’ve seen Sergio Leone’s masterpiece, at least expect some kid-friendly allusions to that ending). It isn’t too reliant on this western, though, as The Last Wish also allows DreamWorks’ talented art departments to create an imaginative course that the characters follow instead (with settings shifting right before our very eyes; you’ll see what I mean when you get there).
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is a well rounded offering from DreamWorks.
On the topic of how The Last Wish looks, gone is the typical CGI art style of old, as director Joel Crawford and company opted for more of a storybook look. The action sequences are also purposefully choppy in a stylistic way, maybe to represent the frantic flipping through pages of a book during the good parts. It’s a strange decision, given how much The Last Wish now exists independently of the other Shrek films, but the choices do work and make this particular flick a feast for the eyes. Otherwise, you get the kinds of jokes you’re used to from the last twenty years of DreamWorks’ “if-it-ain’t-broke” shtick, but that may be your preference. It’s easy to see where the film is heading while you watch it, but it doesn’t make the visual spectacle any less pleasant to be around. The heavily talented cast, ranging from franchise veterans Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek Pinault to newcomers Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, and Harvey Guillén, also make each and every moment of The Last Wish — even the predictable or pendulous plot points or puns — a fun ride.
The extra cherry on top are those brushes with death that Puss keeps having, particularly because they build up towards a few things: an enticing finale, fear for Puss’ safety, and an extra connection we have with the protagonist that other characters aren’t aware of (it pulls us out from everything else that’s going on, and that’s actually a benefit in this case as it allows us to take breathers here and there). The Last Wish may be a bit on the nose with its messages about how we should appreciate the one life we have, but it actually fits in nicely when you look at a character that could die multiple times and took this ability for granted. It allows us to reflect on the character of Puss in Boots and how he’s been represented for many years now within the Shrek franchise. We don’t want to see him go (we especially don’t want him to go go), but should we say goodbye to this character, then The Last Wish is a well rounded send off to a feisty feline that has warmed our hearts time and time again.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.