DIRECTOR EXCLUSIVE
Whiskery Business
Shrek’s swashbuckling Puss in Boots is almost out of lives in The Last Wish
Puss in Boots, Perrito and Kitty Softpaws.
Goldilocks and the three bears. Yikes.
Antonio Banderas is back as Puss.
IT’S EASY TO LAUGH in the face of death when you have nine lives. But what if you’ve carelessly used up eight of them and the metaphorical “game over” screen is looming large on your horizon? That’s the dilemma facing Shrek franchise stalwart Puss in Boots in the dashing moggy’s first movie outing since 2011.
“DreamWorks knew people love these characters and wanted them back on the big screen,” director Joel Crawford tells Red Alert, “but they weren’t going to settle until they found the right story. It was about finding a reason to continue Puss in Boots’s next chapter, and we zeroed in on this idea that he is on the last of his nine lives. There was something magical in that because it’s an absurd premise – I don’t even know where this idea that cats have nine lives came from. As human beings we’re just gifted with one life, so I got really excited that we could take the absurdity and the reality, and put them next to each other to make a big, fun action-comedy with a message about appreciating life.” Antonio Banderas is back to voice the cat with those famously endearing big eyes. This time out he has a few more years on the clock, however, and is experiencing the sort of seenbetter-days existential crisis you’d usually associate with Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi or Wolverine in Logan.