Puss in Boots

Movie Review

Meow mix: There’s plenty of high-speed action, but ‘Puss in Boots’ really soars on silky smoothness of Antonio Banderas as one cool cat

October 28, 2011|By Ty Burr, Globe Staff

***

PUSS IN BOOTS Directed by: Chris Miller

Written by: Brian Lynch, David H. Steinberg, Jon Zack, Tom Wheeler

Starring the voices of: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis, Billy Bob Thornton, Amy Sedaris

At: Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs, and Jordan”s Furniture IMAX in Reading and Natick

Running time: 90 minutes

Rated: PG (adventure action and mild rude humor; hairballs)

Just as the 3-D revolution is sailing over the edge of the cliff to overpriced, under-produced ruin, here comes “Puss in Boots.’’ I don’t know if it will be enough to save the technology - I’m not sure I want it to - but, man, does this thing look good. The landscapes in DreamWorks’ latest computer-animated return to Fairy Tale-land have a richness of detail and an illusion of depth that makes every other 3-D job this year (yes, you too, “Lion King’’) look like cut-and-paste hackwork. The action, and there’s a lot of it, flows consistently and cleanly. The hero’s best frenemy is an egg, and a more bulbously tactile egg you’ll never see. Visually, “Puss’’ is close to rapture.

What? Is the movie itself any good? For a spinoff of a series (“Shrek’’) that has been pounded into the pavement, surprisingly so. “Puss in Boots’’ doesn’t break any new ground in the storytelling department, and its reliance on go-go-go state-of-the-art action sequences grows wearying by the end, but the movie has a devilish wit that works for parent and child alike, and it moves like a bobsled. It’s funny and fun, and if it’s not up to Pixar level, it still represents the best of what the competition has to offer.

And it has Antonio Banderas, who gives a more full-bodied performance with his voice than most actors do with their entire instrument. Banderas also arrives in the Boston area today as the star of Pedro Almodóvar’s blissfully florid kinkathon “The Skin I Live In,’’ and for the continued mental health of your children, please don’t get these two mixed up. “Puss in Boots’’ is the movie about the sword-wielding cat who joins up with a talking egg to rob a giant castle in the sky. You know, the normal one.