Year 15, Day 241 - 8/29/23 - Movie #4,531
BEFORE: It's been a long while since the last "Puss in Boots" film, which I watched back in March 2012, just before watching the final "Shrek" film. Well, I guess it was the LAST "Shrek" film unless somebody decides to try to resurrect that franchise. But since watching the first "Puss in Boots" film, I've watched 3,500 other movies (exactly) so bear with me if I should happen to forget any details from that film, I only have so much brain-space. Hopefully remembering what happened then won't be a pre-requisite - jeez, all the kids who enjoyed that film are probably all college age now, it's been like 12 years.
Speaking of college, I had to get up super early today to open up the theater for freshman orientation - which started at 9:30, but I had to be there at 7:00 am, and that's my last early shift for a while, thank God. Now they can put me on day shifts and night shifts - but not for a few days, I need to catch up on my sleep. But I'm running late today because I couldn't start my movie last night, I had to get to bed early so I could get up early, then I came home at 2 pm and had some lunch and a three-hour nap. Finally got to start my daily movie around 7:30 pm, and now I'll be lucky if I get it posted before midnight. C'est la vie.
Da'Vine Joy Randolph carries over from "The United States vs. Billie Holiday".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Puss in Boots" (Movie #1,031)
THE PLOT: When Puss in Boots discovers that his passion for adventure has taken its toil and he has burned through eight of his nine lives, he launches an epic journey to restore them by finding the mythical Last Wish.
AFTER: Well, I got really concerned at the start of the film because there's about 10 or 15 minutes of set-up that is extremely repetitive, I guess to re-introduce us all to the character he had to state his name and his purpose in life about 200 times. That didn't seem at all like too much to the people making this movie? Nobody noticed that he said, "I...am Puss...in Boots" like way too many times? Just me? Kids aren't stupid, and they aren't forgetful, either, if they've seen any or all of the "Shrek" films or the spin-off film, they all know EXACTLY who this cat is, already. They really could have cut that down substantially and thrown us all right into the action. Then the scene with the veterinarian/barber/witch doctor where Puss learns that he is, in fact, mortal and has only one life left out of nine, similarly went on way too long.
(Of course, it's not true that a cat has nine lives, every organism on the planet has only one, and all life, human and animal, must be given some inherent value, so it's a bit weird that a film for kids would show its main character DYING, or lead kids to believe that anything has more than ONE life, but I guess "fairy-tale rules" also then include old wives' tales, or just phrases like "a cat has nine lives" that have no basis in scientific fact. This could lead to kids killing cats, just to see them come back to life again, which of course doesn't happen, so I think this is JUST a bit irresponsible. Just saying, there could be a class-action lawsuit, Dreamworks.)
So the gag is that Puss has basically squandered 8 of his lives, just by being irresponsible himself - but still, a gag reel of him dying eight times is maybe a bit too much. But the film did get better from there, once some other characters were introduced - so I guess I'm saying I'm not really a fan of the Puss in Boots character, if an inherent part of his make-up is that he's vain, selfish, self-centered and takes too many risks. Sure, he maybe LEARNS to be a different way over the course of this film, but why couldn't he have learned all this much earlier on? He's been in like five movies now.
We also learn he left Kitty Softpaws standing at the altar, and in addition to losing his eight lives, he's just plain filled with regret. He's so down that he gives up his swashbuckling persona and gets taken in by a cat lady, who has like 500 other cats, and he just consigns himself to blending in with the herd, eating kibble twice a day, waiting in a long line for the litter box, and the indignity of wearing little knitted socks instead of booties. He even goes by the cutesy name "Pickles" and grows a beard like Howard Hughes as each day drags on and blends in to the next. Umm, that's called "adulthood", kids, and bad news, you may not like it much. Soon you'll all long for the sweet release of death..
Speaking of death, Death is a major character here, represented by a wolf that speaks Spanish and carries two sickles - he first approaches P.I.B. in a milk bar, and then constantly follows him throughout the film. Yeah, it's also a bit weird in a kids movie to have Death be a character who's never far from reaping the lead's soul. I think maybe some screenwriter was working out some stuff. Should characters die in storybook land? Don't they live on forever as long as their story is still being told? I guess maybe since Lord Farquhar died in the first "Shrek" movie all bets are off in this version of fairyland? Let's just say there are some odd choices made here, this could be the darkest movie made for kids, like ever. It's almost like if Ingmar Bergman decided to make a fairy tale movie. If you mixed up "The Seventh Seal", and "Hour of the Wolf" with the Brothers Grimm, you might get something akin to this character.
Still, I think I really dug it. Puss and Kitty, along with this chihuahua, Perditto, that was also hiding out with the cat lady, race to get their hands on a map that will lead them to a "fallen star" that landed in the Dark Forest, and whoever finds the star can then be granted a wish - even though fallen stars aren't really stars, they're meteorites, and neither stars nor meteorites have wish-granting abilities. But again this is fairy-tale logic, and Pinocchio taught us that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true - even if your dreams are totally sick and illegal? Never really understood the logic of that Disney song. But hey, the song tells us that "If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme?" Really? I bet I can find plenty of people with dreams that are just too extreme to be legal. Again, just saying. There's a prominent "Ethical Bug" character here, who's a riff on Jiminy Cricket, so I guess Disney owns that name and they couldn't use it - but he sounds just like Jimmy Stewart for some reason.
The other characters who want to get a hold of that map, and the star and the wish it represents, are Goldilocks and the Three Bears (who've joined together as a "crime family") and Big Jack Horner, formerly known as Little Jack Horner, who also wants to corner the market on all the magical items in the universe - he's got Mary Poppins' bag of holding, Alice in Wonderland's snack cakes, and somehow King Midas' golden hands, but still that's not enough for him, he wants it ALL. Greedy characters tend not to do well in fairy tales, but he doesn't seem to care. He's also willing to use up all the magical items in his collection, but I guess he figures if he can get to the star, he can wish them all right back into existence, right?
The other thing that just ran on WAY too long was this changing Dark Forest, which was like a little pocket dimension in Fairyland that changes based on who's holding the map - the map changes hands every few seconds, so the landscape changes about 1,800 times, yet the characters never seem to quite figure out what's causing the changes. Are they THAT stupid, because I bet the kids in the audience "got it" within the first minute. No need to be so repetitive here. Puss in Boots, for example, holds the map and then gets stuck in the Castle of Lost Souls, where he's forced to confront his 8 previous lives. Somehow they're all him, but they're not him, so just how does this whole 8-time resurrection thing work, anyway? Well, it really doesn't.
But over and over and over - now THIS person's holding the map, no, wait, THIS person's holding the map, no, wait... This is an appalling lack of story progression, it's just reversal after reversal after reversal. Repeat until we fill up 100 minutes and the movie ends. Still, there's some form of redemption for almost all of the characters, except for the bad ones who have to die. Then there's just one final confrontation with the Big Boss, which is Death, but I suppose we'll all have to face that one someday - but unlike Puss in Boots, we're all fated to lose it. Thanks for watching, kids! You'll be old and have kids of your own when they make another sequel!
Also starring the voices of Antonio Banderas (last seen in 'Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Salma Hayek (last seen in "Fled"), Harvey Guillen (last seen in "The Internship"), Florence Pugh (last seen in "The Wonder"), Olivia Colman (last heard in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Ray Winstone (last seen in "King of Thieves"), Samson Kayo (last seen in "The Bubble"), John Mulaney (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Wagner Moura (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Anthony Mendez, Kevin McCann, Bernardo De Paula (last heard in "Ferdinand"), Betsy Sodaro (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Artemis Pebdani (last seen in "Sex Tape"), Conrad Vernon (last heard in "The Addams Family 2"), Cody Cameron (last heard in "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2"), Kailey Crawford (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), Al Rodrigo (last seen in "House of Sand and Fog"), Bob Persichetti (last heard in "Puss and Boots"), Miguel Gabriel, Pilar Uribe, Heidi Gardner (last seen in "Hustle").
RATING: 7 out of 10 exploding baby unicorn horns
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