Trailer Tuesday: Puss in Boots

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Several years in development, CGI-fantasy adventure Puss in Boots is a spin-off from DreamWorks Animation's Shrek quadrilogy - the highest grossing animated film series of all time. Despite being the fifth feature length film set in Shrek's Fairy Tale & Nursery Rhyme Universe, I'm still excited for this release, seeing as the Antonio Banderas-voiced Puss, with his comical muddle of swashbuckler and feline attributes, is probably my favourite character in the entire Shrek series.


Releasing in 3D, like most animated movies these days, Puss in Boots is apparently not a straightforward adaptation of the well-known Puss in Boots fairy tale. Instead of our feline hero lifting the fortune's of a miller's son and outwitting a shape-shifting giant, here he is hired to save a town from the loathsome outlaws Jack and Jill - voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris. Jack and Jill have managed to harness some sort of devastating supernatural power, and it falls to Puss to put things right with the aid of genius mastermind Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis), and svelte thief Kitty Softpaws (Banderas's Desperado co-star Salma Hayek).

Puss in Boots is sure to be one of the biggest animated releases of the 2011 festive/end of year season. It also looks like a strongly plot-driven action-adventure (punctuated with funny bits), which is a pleasant change after the Shrek films, where the storylines became increasingly secondary to the gags and witty verbal exchanges. For the record, Puss in Boots is set before the events of the Shrek movies.


There is something of a Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides vibe about Puss in Boots, given that it takes a beloved supporting/ensemble character from a smash hit series and bumps him up to leading man status. Oh, and it pairs him with a sassy, Spanish female counterpart. Here's hoping though that this new animated family film is better than Pirates 4 (my review here).

Puss in Boots releases in North America on 4 November - with South Africans having to wait a full month after that. The film opens locally on 2 December, to coincide with the start of the Summer school holidays.

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