Puss in Boots was the surprise hit character — the standout sidekick — of the second Shrek movie, and went on to tickle us in Shrek the Third and Shrek Forever After. Sleek, foolish, vain and blessed with the all-butter voice of Antonio Banderas, he was the roving ginger tom whom audiences wished to take home and make a pet of.
His easy charm and roguish asides have earned the well-heeled moggy what every sidekick wants but few deserve: his own ‘origin story’. Puss in Boots is a full-length, computer-animated feature film which describes the making of the mouser.
Several fairy tales are put through the scriptwriters’ mouli and served up where once upon a time and long ago a story might have been written. Puss’s best friend and blood/albumen brother is Humpty Dumpty; Humpty spends his free time searching for three magic beans which he believes will grow into a beanstalk; the stalk (he hopes) will carry him and his furry chum to a magic castle in the clouds, and the castle will contain a goose whose golden eggs Humpty and Puss will steal and live off happily for ever after — rather in the way, one imagines, that the producers of this film must hope to live off each of their characters.
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