Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

1hr 42mins (PG)

Imaginative Shrek spin-off ★★★

“It’s been 13 years since the last Shrek film, and one less since Puss in Boots had his only previous solo adventure,” said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. Now the swashbuckling cat is back “with a different style of animation (you won’t notice after a few minutes)”, but with Antonio Banderas still supplying the voice of Puss, and Salma Hayek voicing Kitty Softpaws, his sidekick and “on-off romantic partner”. At the start of the film, Puss is in trouble – like all cats, he has nine lives, but he’s down to his last one, having lost his eighth in a run-in with a giant bell. To replenish his supply, he and Kitty set off in search of a fallen wishing star. The film “is a little short of genuine magic”, but it has a stellar cast who all seem to be “having a high old time”, including Florence Pugh as Goldilocks, and Olivia Colman and Ray Winstone as Mama and Papa Bear.

Like the original Puss in Boots, this “witty” and “beautifully animated” film “boasts an eclectic mix of characters from legends and fairy tales”, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. “Jack Horner (John Mulaney) is an obese, hunchbacked villain”, and there are cameos for the likes of Pinocchio and Excalibur. It’s all very “imaginatively” done, but a word of warning: “younger children might want to hide under the seat” when the Big Bad Wolf turns up. You do get the dispiriting impression, though, that this film was made because “some top-secret algorithmic function” at DreamWorks had decreed it time for a Puss in Boots reboot, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. It should pacify toddlers, but it’s a “bland and forgettable” film that fails properly to harness the power of its cast.