A few years back, I was gloating because I believed that Illumination, the studio that came up with the annoying Minions, had got their hands on Disney's angriest competitor DreamWorks. It seems the reality is more complicated: the two animation studios now have the same parent company, but they remain separate. So, spoke too soon, and too uninformedly. What's more, any input DreamWorks may have got from Illumination doesn't seem to have harmed them in the least, quite the contrary.
I really didn't expect to like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish for a number of reasons. One, it's the sequel to a spinoff which was quite decent but didn't beg to be followed up. Two, it is, albeit tangentially, part of the Shrek franchise, which is the main reason I have a lingering scepticism towards DreamWorks in the first place, in spite of really enjoying many of their films. The Shrek films' ambition to "deconstruct fairy tales" is so clearly aimed at the Disney versions of said tales that it becomes embarrassing, and there's a mean streak running through them that I know many people appreciate but I kinda hate.
Three, the theme of The Last Wish, as praised by a number of critics online, didn't seem to be ideally suited for a family film. It appeared to centre to an alarming degree on confronting and accepting your mortality. That may be an interesting topic for grown-up critics, but what about the kids, a not unimportant target audience? If anyone should be allowed to not to have the inevitability of death rubbed in their faces, surely it should be children.
But, I have to admit defeat. I was won over. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is vivaciously animated, cleverly plotted, and has engaging characters. Yes, the "value your life" message is in there, but it's not what everything's about. Puss isn't the only one who may come to realise that he already has what he needs, "no magic required". The last wish of a fallen star, which he and many others seek, becomes a useful MacGuffin in order to highlight this theme. The way the map to the star changes, and the terrain and its challenges with it, depending on who uses it, was a great detail, inventive and unironically fairy-taleish.
The villains are also particularly strong. There's the dead-serious one (literally), a scary wolf in a hood, armed with two sickles, whom Puss meets in a tavern while drowning his sorrows in cream when he's found out he's on the last of his nine lives. Puss thinks he's a bounty hunter at first. He's not.
Then there's the potentially redeemable antagonist Goldilocks and her bears, a band of small-time crooks (as signalled by their far-from-posh English accents). I really liked the take on the Goldilocks story here: in this version, the bears adopt the orphan girl, fondly imagining that she's part of their family now. Goldi is not so sure.
Lastly, there's a more traditional Shrek-type villain, Big Jack Horner, who is Little Jack Horner grown up to a far from good boy. He's traditional in that he is a comic villain, but also (as the best ones of the Shrek villain bunch) a lethal and ruthless one. The big difference to the Shrek films is that the protagonists respect him and take him seriously. "Oh no, not Jack Horner" Puss exclaims in dismay when he learns who has the map. "That's why you don't mess with Jack Horner", Puss's sometime partner and love interest Kitty comments later, grimly. This approach makes the comic elements of Horner funnier than if he'd been the endless butt of Shrek jokes. At the same time, the cats are right to fear him.
Jack Horner also serves a useful purpose as a dark-humour-magnet. There are Shrek-type jokes of the too-harsh-for-a-Disney-flick kind in this film, but as they're mostly connected to Horner and his actions they're far easier to take than if Puss & Co. had behaved with casual cruelty (as Shrek and Fiona sometimes did). Whether they're heroes or anti-heroes, I prefer protagonists I'm supposed to root for to steer clear of meanness and pettiness. Villains, now, that's a completely different matter.
