Plot
Sometime before Puss (Antonio Banderas) meets Shrek and Donkey in Shrek 2, he arrives at a town while escaping a bounty hunter. There he learns that the outlaw couple Jack (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jill (Amy Sedaris) have the magic beans he's been looking for most of his life, beans that can lead him to a giant's castle holding valuable golden goose eggs. When Puss tries to steal them from the outlaws' room, a masked cat (Salma Hayek) interrupts. Both fail and escape, and Puss follows the cat back a club, where they have a dance-off and a sword fight, ending when Puss hits the masked cat in the head with a guitar. He learns that the masked cat was Kitty Softpaws. She is allied with Humpty Alexander Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis), Puss' long-estranged childhood friend from the orphanage where he was raised. Overcoming Puss' feelings of betrayal for a youthful misadventure when Humpty tricked Puss into helping commit a crime, they convince him to join them in finding the beans and retrieving the golden eggs.
The trio steals the beans from Jack and Jill and elude the angry outlaws in a canyon chase. As Humpty leads his compatriots to the spot where they must plant the beans, Puss and Kitty's relationship begins to grow from rivalry into friendship. The trio ride the fast-growing beanstalk into the clouds where, Humpty explains, they'll find castle of the late giant. Now, he continues, a fearsome monster called the Terror guards the Golden Goose. When they realize the golden eggs are too heavy to carry, they steal the Goose — which is just a gosling — and escape the castle and the Terror. While celebrating their victory, the group is ambushed by Jack and Jill, who knock Puss unconscious.
When Puss wakes up, he tracks Jack and Jill back to his old hometown, where he learns that the entire heist was a plot by Humpty to lure him home to be captured, as revenge for abandoning him to the authorities when Humpty's youthful heist went bad. Jack, Jill, and even Kitty were involved in the con. After pleas from his adoptive mother, the head of the orphanage, Puss turns himself in to the guards while Humpty donates many golden eggs to the town and becomes a hero.
While in prison, Puss meets the original Jack from the "Jack and the Beanstalk" story who warns him that the Terror is in fact the Golden Goose's mother, and it will stop at nothing to get its child back. A repentant Kitty helps Puss break out of prison. Puss convinces Humpty to help him fight off the Terror, saying he knows Humpty is a good person at heart, and he will be forgiven if he helps save the town. The Terror arrives, revealing itself to be a giant goose. Using the Golden Goose as bait, Puss and Humpty lure the Terror out of the town, but Humpty and the Goose are knocked off a bridge with Puss holding on to them. Humpty knows Puss cannot hold both of them, and he lets go, sacrificing himself to save the Goose and the town. Humpty's shell cracks open to reveal that he was a golden egg on the inside. The Terror then takes the Goose and Humpty away back to the giant's castle.
Puss is forced to flee because he is still an outlaw, but his efforts to save the town make him a hero among the townspeople. Puss and Kitty escape the guards once more, and Kitty says she will see him again soon, showing that she has taken his boots. In the epilogue, Jack and Jill are recovering from their injuries after being crushed by the Terror, Humpty is shown once again in his regular egg form as he rides the Terror into the clouds, and Puss and Kitty head back to dance at Kitty's hideout, the Glitter Box, where they finally kiss.
[edit]Cast
- Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots
- Salma Hayek as Kitty Softpaws, a Tuxedo cat who is Puss's female counterpart
- Zach Galifianakis as Humpty Alexander Dumpty, the mastermind who intends on retrieving the Golden Eggs from the one-of-a-kind Goose
- Billy Bob Thornton & Amy Sedaris as Jack and Jill (married), two murderous outlaws
- Zeus Mendoza as Rancher
- Constance Marie as Imelda, Puss's surrogate mother
- Guillermo del Toro as Moustache Man, Comandate
- Bob Joles as Guiseppe
[edit]Production
The film had been in development since 2004, when Shrek 2 was released.[5] As a Shrek 2 spin-off, it was originally planned for release in 2008 as a direct-to-video film,[6] then titled Puss in Boots: The Story of an Ogre Killer.[7] Due to the market conditions, DreamWorks re-slated the film in 2006 as a theatrical release.[8] Production on the film began after the release of 2010'sShrek Forever After. Banderas said in an interview in early 2010 that he had completed the first recordings of his character.[9] Late in 2010,Guillermo del Toro, director of Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, had signed on as executive producer.[10]
Except for Puss, the film features new characters. Citing the co-writer, David H. Steinberg, "It doesn't overlap with Shrek at all. Partly that was done to tell an original Puss story, but partly because we didn't know what Shrek 4 were going to do with the characters and we couldn't write conflicting storylines."[11] The film was teased in Shrek Forever After when Shrek finally put the book of Shrek away and put it next to a book titled "Puss in Boots".
Its release date was originally set for November 4, 2011, but was pushed a week earlier, on October 28, 2011.[3] Anne Globe, head of worldwide marketing for Dreamworks Animation, said the decision to move the film's release date a week earlier was to attract parents and their children to see the film before other family-friendly movies released in November 2011.[12]
Puss in Boots marks the first DreamWorks' feature film that was partly made in India. Techincolor's owned studio, which had mainly worked on TV specials and DVD bonus material, spent six months animating three major scenes in the film. The outsourcing had its financial advantages, with 40% less labor cost than in the US, but the primary reason for outsourcing to India was lack of people, due to producing as many as three films in a year.[13]
[edit]Soundtrack
| Puss in Boots | |
|---|---|
| Film score by Henry Jackman | |
| Released | October 24, 2011 |
| Genre | Score |
| Length | 65:51 |
| Label | Sony Classical |
Henry Jackman, the composer for Puss in Boots, utilized folk instruments of traditional Latin music. Inspired by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, Jackman blended guitars and Latin percussion with an orchestral sound influenced by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.[14] Also,Lady Gaga's song 'Americano' was contributed, but not in the official soundtrack.
All music composed by Henry Jackman, except "Diablo Rojo" and "Hanuman", which are byRodrigo y Gabriela.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "A Bad Kitty" | 2:04 |
| 2. | "One Leche" | 2:01 |
| 3. | "Jack and Jill" | 0:22 |
| 4. | "Holy Frijoles" | 1:14 |
| 5. | "Chasing Tail" | 1:09 |
| 6. | "Diablo Rojo" | 4:53 |
| 7. | "Humpty Dumpty & Kitty Softpaws" | 2:42 |
| 8. | "The Orphanage" | 4:29 |
| 9. | "Honor and Justice" | 1:44 |
| 10. | "That Fateful Night" | 2:35 |
| 11. | "The Wagon Chase" | 2:58 |
| 12. | "Team Effort" | 0:57 |
| 13. | "Planting the Beans" | 2:09 |
| 14. | "The Magic Beanstalk" | 1:17 |
| 15. | "Castle in the Clouds" | 1:57 |
| 16. | "Golden Goose of Legend" | 6:38 |
| 17. | "Hanuman" | 3:39 |
| 18. | "Confronting the Past" | 1:37 |
| 19. | "I Was Always There" | 4:06 |
| 20. | "Kitty-Cat Break-Out" | 1:35 |
| 21. | "The Great Terror" | 7:56 |
| 22. | "Farewell to San Ricardo" | 1:32 |
| 23. | "The Puss Suite" | 3:09 |
| 24. | "The Giant's Castle" | 3:08 |
[edit]Reception
[edit]Critical reception
The film received very positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 82% of 94 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.8 out of 10. The website's consensus is, "It isn't deep or groundbreaking, but what it lacks in profundity, Puss in Boots more than makes up for with an abundance of wit, visual sparkle, and effervescent charm."[15] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 65 based on 23 reviews.[16]CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade moviegoers gave the film was an "A-" on an A+ to F scale.[17][edit]Box office
Puss in Boots has grossed $135,361,000 in North America, and $62,000,000 in other countries, as of November 22, 2011, for a worldwide total of $197,361,000.[2]WATCH ONLINE
