Puss in Boots (2011)

PG for violence.  At this point in the franchise, there isn't a ton of innuendo or straight up offensive swearing.  I mean, there's a little in the sequel to this movie, but I'm not writing about the sequel now, am I?  There is a reference that Puss in Boots often seduces women, but it's very tame and moves pretty quickly past that moment.  Instead, this is about scary imagery on camera.  But it's a kids' movie, so everything has to have quasi-scary action.  PG.

DIRECTOR: Chris Miller

I'll tell you what.  I'm so overwhelmed with movies that I have to write about at this point because the Academy Awards are this Sunday.  For me, it's Monday.  I am going to try and knock out oh-so-many blogs today and tomorrow because I don't know when else to do them.  Is it bad when your hobby causes you stress?  I don't know how to relax anymore.  So if the quality of these blogs takes a huge dip, I genuinely apologize.  I've never really set a standard for writing, because I'm just trying to word vomit these things to have a lot of daily content.  But I have to acknowledge that there's a change I'll reach rock bottom and it will fall apart from there.

Of course Guillermo del Toro has his name on this movie.  I mean, I don't know how much or how little involvement he had in the making of the Puss in Boots movie, but I love the idea that he had something to do with it.  If you've been following my blog lately, you've probably seen a streak of Shrek blogs.  It's all to get prepped for Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (available now on home video!), the ur-film in the franchise.  In the course of my Shrek binge, I've discovered that I'm different from the typical Shrek fan.  I think Shrek found itself in the sequels while most people probably think the opposite.  Like my opinion of many Dreamworks movies, I always kind of thought that the Shrek franchise invested too much in the fun and the funny to have any real heart.  Again, I'm writing in the new Disney renaissance, where Disney has time-and-again challenged us to look at ourselves in the storytelling.  I actually felt pretty good about Puss in Boots as  a movie because, despite the fact that it is a movie about a cat in footwear doing a broad parody of Zorro, there's actually something really good to watch here.

For the Shrek movies, I always thought that Puss in Boots was a bit of a punchline.  I mean, as much as I like the Puss in Boots stuff, the big adorable eye joke is overplayed.  (Yet, why do I keep laughing at it?  Callbacks aren't supposed to work like that.  Maybe I'm old and want to like things.) Puss isn't really a character in those movies.  He's there as someone to sing pop songs and to provide banter with Donkey because Shrek is supposed to be simply flustered.  (Note:  I'm now figuring out the entire Donkey / Puss in Boots dynamic in real time.  I apologize for not overthinking this relationship ahead of time.)  Donkey is meant to say a million words a second.  Shrek, by his very nature, isn't meant to talk, so all of Shrek's reactions to Donkey are meant to be frustrated or slow moving.  But adding Puss in Boots to the trio makes Donkey have someone who is unaffected by the sheer size of Donkey's personality.  It's nice.  You get the funny guy with two very polarizing directions to take the character.  I was always just amazed that Eddie Murphy was verbally sparring with Antonio Banderas.

The cynical part of me would say that there is no need for a Shrek spin-off, but I know that I'm wrong with this.  Puss in Boots is one of those spin-offs, like Frasier, that gives a character who has little to say a compelling storyline.  The way that Miller does this is by actually treating him in the way a protagonist should be treated: explaining that not everything is as it seems.   (Side story because I have nowhere else to put this.  For a send up of Zorro, you actually cast Zorro from The Mask of Zorro?  I suppose this isn't the first time something like this has been done, a 'la Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with Sean Connery, but still!)   Puss is this fully developed character that has a reason behind his hubris.  Honestly, Zorro himself is almost an archetype. (Okay, I'll have to rewatch those movies to say that with confidence.)  But when we meet Puss in Shrek 2, he's just there to be a joke.  A lot of those characters are there as bits.  We don't know much about Gingy or Pinocchio beyond their one-note jokes.

But Puss actually goes from being just a brigand assassin to a hero of the people.  Now, I know that the world of Puss in Boots is not Mexico.  But isn't it?  I mean, I see Guillermo del Toro's name attached to this movie, I get that he's doing this because of cultural ties.  If Puss is Zorro, we need to know that Puss in Boots is for the people.  Oddly enough --and this is giving Puss in Boots far too much gravitas -- Puss in Boots acts as an alternate reality tale of Zorro.  Zorro, in my mind, is Batman.  He is what he is. He exists and he always has existed. But Puss in Boots acts as a cautionary tale for the idea of a masked vigilante.  He has all of these skills and these moral codes, yet he's treated as a monster by the people around him.  Puss is the champion of the people. The fact that he's from a small, Mexico-like village (why does it feel racist?  Mexico is a place that has ties to the producer of the film!) gives the character a heart beyond what he presents in the films up to this point.  There's something vulenerable about him. He's punished because he believes in the people / eggs around him.  

Humpty Dumpty (This is my life now.  I start with a subject of "Humpty Dumpty") makes an eggcellent (I can't help myself) antagonist because of the foil that he provides to Puss.  It's nothing new.  Marvel has been all over this dynamic, but I'm going to spell it out anyway.  Because Humpty and Puss come from the same ambiguous origins, the archetype of the orphan, they mirror each other in ways that make the story sympathetic to one another.  With Puss, he's just looking for a peer to make the world a better place.  Humpty, with his perverted sense of justice, is incapable of prioritizing the good in the world.  It makes it fascinating that Humpty actually hates Puss not because of the betrayal on the bridge, as he keeps pointing out, but because Puss represents what Humpty should be doing.  I actually like when Humpty spirals deeper and deeper into vengeance because it almost acts as a stronger cautionary tale for Puss.  My one complaint about the movie is that Humpty puts aside his quest for revenge simply because Puss makes a heartfelt plea.  For most of the movie, it comes down to Puss putting away his resentment for Humpty, who is the true villain of the bridge story, and learning to forgive.  Puss, then, is twice punished for his trust of Humpty because people don't really change.

But Humpty goes through the motions of bonding with Puss.  Knowing that his vengeance would be incomplete without Puss taking the hit for the Golden Goose, he has to fake rekindling a relationship with someone he treated like a brother.  The entire thing is part of the show and there's such delight when the plan goes off as planned. (It's a bit of a stretch that both Jack and Jill + Kitty Softpaws were part of this, but then I realized I had to write out "Kitty Softpaws" without a hint of irony made it all better).  It makes it almost unbelievable (you know, the movie of a cat and his talking egg friend) when Humpty changes his motivations for the greater good.  

But I don't even care.  This movie works on so many levels and it has something to say about the role of family and trust.  Sure, it almost teeters into that superficial messaging thing that a lot of other Shrek movies do.  But I really love the aesthetics.  The characters actually mean something to me.  It just keeps on working when it shouldn't be working. Maybe it's a me thing.  Maybe it's what happens when you watch enough of a franchise to just get it.  The only difference is that my love for the series only started when everyone else's dropped off.  That's reasonable, right?