It’s a mog’s game
PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH
12A ★★★
While it may not overtake the new Avatar, this belated sequel is purring away nicely at the box office. The second solo adventure for Antonio Banderas’s ginger Zorro grossed $309million before it even opened in the UK. Not bad for the follow-up to a Shrek spin-off from 11 years ago.
This time, Puss must forgo the senoritas, the swashbuckling and the full-fat milk swilling due to an accident at work. After defeating a rampaging troll, a falling church bell cuts short the showboating. When he comes round, the doctor informs him he has just exhausted eight of his nine lives.
“My prescription?” the doc says. “No more adventures for you. You need to retire.”
So our once-carefree hero ditches his floppy hat and boots to wander naked into Mama Lana’s Cat Rescue for a life of tasteless cat biscuits and smelly litter trays.
But he’s back on his paws after discovering a map to a magical meteorite that could restore his nine lives and his mojo. Forming a triple act with a clingy dog called Perrito (Harvey Guillen) and old flame Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek Pinault), he sets out to find the mystical Wishing Star. The quest will see them battle a fearsome wolf (Wagner Moura), cockney gangsters Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears (Ray Winstone, Olivia Colman and Samson Kayo), and the now-massive Jack Horner ( John Mulaney) who appears to have outgrown his “good boy” days but stuck with the pie-eating.
That’s a lot of villains and none are as amusing as Zach Galifianakis’s Humpty Dumpty from Puss’s last adventure.
But the animation is gorgeous, the action is zippy and Banderas is brilliant. After a lean few months for family animation, kids and parents should lap this one up.
A magical meteorite could restore Puss’s nine lives and his mojo