Ani-May-tion II: Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (Dir Joel Crawford, 1h 42m, 2023)

 
Once more we arrive on animation's shores. 2023 was a bumper year for the genre with the colossal showdown across the awards season between the cutting edge, in the form of the spectacular and action-packed Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse staring down the undisputed master of Japanese animation, in what may be the final film from the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, in the form of the deeply personal and poignant The Boy and the Heron. Even away from this titanic clash, animation has been in remarkably rude health in 2023 from Aardman to Illumination, walking away with the second highest grossing film of the year, the workmanlike but crowd-pleasing The Super Mario Bros. Movie to the offbeat Da Vinci stop-start memoir The Inventor (dir. Jim Capobianco and Pierre-Luc Granjon), to the surprisingly pretty good Leo, that sees Adam Sandler's studio make only their second animated film.

Winnowing the wheat from the chaff in 2023 down to just a few choice films has not been easy. Miyazaki's latest masterpiece is still yet to hit streaming, but over the next month we will consider stylish super-heroics, teenage mutants, jazz in Japan, and, of course the near-miraculous release of Nimona, but first, to Dreamworks, who, in the last few years have, as much as Sony Pictures Animation, been pushing the envelope of 3D animation, seen in the off-beat The Bad Guys (2022) and culminating in 2023's Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,: a visually spectacular and emotionally resonant tale.

Back in action: Puss in Boots (voice of Antonio Banderas)

With our feline hero, Puss in Boots, (Antonio Banderas)-first appearing in Shrek 2 (2004), and knowingly homaging Banderas' role as Zorro through most of the 90s-awakening from an injury on one of his adventures to find he has died, and is on his last of nine lives, so Puss has a further scrape with mortality, in the form of a towering and dangerous wolf, (voiced by Wagner Moura), who might be one of the best antagonists in the studio's entire history. Panicked for his life after this encounter, and defeat by the Wolf, so Puss goes into hiding in a cats' home, burying his previous identity in the garden, in a moment straight out of classic Westerns. Still in fear for his life, so Puss resigns himself to the rest of his life as a mere cat, the one break in the monotony of his day being Pepito (Harvey Guillén), a dog in disguise as a cat, who attempts to befriend Puss.

This retirement is short-lived, however, as on the trail of our hero come bounty hunters, in the form of Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears (Ray Winstone, Olivia Coleman, and Samson Kayo), who match the fairytale characters with a 'East Lunnen' wideboy gangster family, who seem to be, apart from being three bears and a girl, straight out of a Guy Ritchie film. Attempting to putting a team together to heist a map from 'Big' Jack Horner, (John Mulaney), an unpleasant industrialist bent on collecting the world's magic, and whose sights are now set upon the Wishing Star, a magical item that could grant Puss a new set of lives and a new lease on life as a swashbuckling hero, unwillingly bringing both Pepito, and former flame, Kitty (Salma Hayek).

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is not just a visual feast but a surprisingly mature meditation upon mortality.

The Last Wish's strengths begin with its surprisingly solemn plot-this is, after all a film that concerns itself with the mortality of its protagonist, with much of the opening half of the film depicting Puss falling into despondency and depression, struggling to come to terms with the end of his heroic days. As the wolf's rivalry with him becomes personal, and positively nightmarish, so Puss struggles to combat him, leading to the film's emotional nadir with Puss suffering a (remarkably realistic) panic attack, a bold move for what is, after all, a children's film. Moreover, with the film's focus on 'one more adventure' and its hero coming to terms, and accepting, his mortality, there's undeniable comparison to be made with Wolverine's last outing in Logan (2017), and classic Westerns, such as Shane (1953), and the Western in general, from the echoes of Ennio Morricone scores, to the Wolf's characteristic whistle that calls to mind Once Upon a Time in the West's Harmonica.

Yet, against this downbeat tone, this film is both action packed-the energy in the fight scenes, particularly once the rival groups after the Wishing Star come into conflict with each other, is palpable, bolstered by some stunning animation during these duels-and a smartly applied comic sensibility, much of which keeps the film in balance, neither too-downbeat, nor losing sight of its central conceit that, for all Puss's previous eight lives of adventure, this is the one in which he's truly beginning to live for others. Much of this comedic heavy lifting may be done by the Three Bears, Goldilocks and Big Jack Horner; Mulaney in particular gets some of the funniest scenes in the whole film, including a Disney-esque back-and-forth with a Jimney Cricket homage, who quickly become appalled by his dastardly actions, whilst the Bears do, at least, get a sweet dénouement to their journey with their adoptive daughter.

With beautifully animated and kinetic fights, and a spectacular visual sensibility, The Last Wish may be the start of a bold new vision for Dreamworks

But it is visually that The Last Wish truly excels. This is not where one would have expected the best film that Dreamworks have made in the last five years to come from. The Shrek franchise has largely, been the preserve of solid but unadventurous animation to present its riff on Walt Disney's Princess films, whilst Puss in Boots (2011) is in places downright ugly, a film, after all where the villain was an unsettlingly fleshy egg with lips. Yet, here we are; the film looks beautiful, its vibrant colour palate adding to the drama, and the action, of this film, and even better in animation. Nowhere are the lessons quickly learnt and adapted by Dreamworks from the unquestionable earthquake across the medium of Into the Spiderverse, better seen than in the two fights that essentially book-end the film, veritable tour-de-forces of animation as a medium, full of dynamic visual-and animation choices that repeatedly show aspects of our feline hero in  a fine display of visual and narrative story-telling.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish remains a welcome surprise; few would have expected the sequel to the workmanlike spin-off of the Shrek franchise to be an animation, and narrative, spectacle in a film that considers mortality, heroism, and living one's life to the full.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is available to stream via AppleTV, and on DVD and BluRay from ‎ Universal Pictures. It is also currently available via MAX, and on DVD and BluRay from ‎ Universal Pictures in the US.

Next week, we're in New York, with the pulp comic heroes in a half-shell, in animated form! in: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

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