Catnip

Sometimes you can pop down the cinema and be confronted with a rather depressing list, options narrowed if you have forgotten your £D specs at home. With much umming and aahing, we opted for Puss in Boots (2D) – I would have gone for Aardman’s Arthur Christmas but that was only available in 3D (we never watched Arthur Christmas while it was still in the cinema in the end).


After the tired performances of the last two Shrek movies, there was some trepidation about venturing into another adventure by the same people. Puss in Boots was now the eponymous star of the show, giving him a backstory in what seemed like a prequel to the Shrek saga. Set in some vertiginous outpost of Spain’s New World empire, it follows Puss’ latest hustle, the marks being the abominable twosome of Jack and Jill and their radioactive-looking magic beans. He is thwarted by Kitty Softpaws who is working for Humpty ‘Alexander’ Dumpty (not the English civil war royalist cannon that fell from its ramparts, but the nursery rhyme figure that resulted from the incident). The three together set out to capture the beans and raid the giant’s castle but who can be trusted.

The strength of the movie - in contrast to the previous two Shreks - is not in the setpieces, enjoyably chaotic as they are, but in the characterisation that makes you care or cavil in equal measure over the protagonists. Despite being in some baked Sierra Madre-like territory, it is a welcome about turn from lush and/or swampy fairyland, much of the humour seeming fresher, as well as giving a new and appropriate angle for Antonio Banderas to polish his Zorro burr (for of course he was the hero of the modern Zorro movies). Salma Hayek as a sultry Kitty with a traumatic past, Zach Galifianakis as the constantly scheming egg whose motives expertly change (or rather are revealed) as the narrative progresses and Billy Bon Thornton and Amy Sedaris as the hideous hill-billies Jack and Jill – all are worthy ingredients to a prequel that is the recipe for a sequel. Four out of five.