Puss In Boots [DVD]

Ah ha! With the Shrek franchise having run it's natural life, you might have thought you would have seen the last of the characters from it. But that was not the case. With Dreamworks animation looking to see if any of the supporting characters from Shrek might be worthy of a movie on their own, there was only one logical choice.

And thus Puss in Boots is back.

In a movie that takes place some unspecified amount of time before his first appearance in Shrek Two.

The film sees him in the position he was in back at the start of his first film in that. A sword for hire. And one with a past. One which comes back to haunt him when a cat burglar called Kitty Softpaws drags him into a get rich quick scheme. Which puts them up against two outlaws. And a figure from Puss's past.

Can he save the day, get the money and the lady, and redeem himself at the same time?

Styled like a cross between a spaghetti western and a Zorro movie at first, this gets both styles exactly right from the off. The attention to detail in the animation and the character design is very impressive. It gets more into fairytale territory as it goes along. It does have the Shrek style of slighty twisted versions of traditional fairy tales - bringing us Jack and Jill as a pair of hillbilly bandits. And it's not laugh out loud a minute funny, all occasional bits of humour coming out of character interaction.

Kitty Softpaws, despite good work from Salma Hayek with the voice, and her natural chemistry with Antonio Banderas, isn't quite the strongest of characters, but that's only a minor complaint.

One thing this does have in it's favour though is an excellent score, music in the style of the setting, and one that should have you tapping your feet as you go along.

It doesn't break new ground, but it takes a great character and puts him in an entertaining escapade of his own, and it's a lot of fun all in all. Here's hoping for a sequel.

The dvd has the following language and subtitle options:

Languages: English.

Subtitles: English.

It's also English audio captioned.

The disc begins with several trailers but you can skip these via either the menu or the next buttons on the dvd remote control.

All these trailers can be seen amongst the extras as well. Some in the previews section, and some in the world of Dreamworks animation section. The latter gives you the chance to see music and/or clips or related items from five other Dreamworks movie.

Such as an advert for the How to Train your Dragon live show. Which can also be seen via the main dvd menu.

Only other extras are three deleted scenes. These are animated storyboards rather than cgi animation but they do have music and sound and dialogue and a short introuduction to each from a producer of the film. They can be watched individually or all in a row. If doing the latter they last for six minutes in total.

There is also a rather cursory eight minutes long making of the voice track for the movie feature. This is laden with clips from the film, but the other parts, showing the actors and work and being interviewed, are quite good.

Honestly, I was a bit doubtful that Dreamworks could really pull off taking such a well known and loved character from a series of much-loved movies to make into its own entity and make Puss in Boots the main star of a feature, but I was pleasantly surprised here. Not only did Dreamworks carry this task off so flawlessly, but in my opinion they actually managed to make "Puss in Boots" much better than any of the Shrek sequels.

Puss in Boots plays mainly as a prequel to Shrek and has no real ties to the story or characters in Shrek (other than Puss in those films). As far as this story goes, it exists completely outside of the same fairytale kingdom that Shrek lives in and remains outside of any Shrek storylines, so it's easy to focus on this film as a stand-alone story rather than a sequel or a continuation.

The storyline is easy to follow (an explanation of Puss's origins as well as a plot revolving around his association with Humpty Dumpty and a quest to find the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs); while the film is primarily aimed at children, it suits adults just fine and is definitely entertaining enough with just those tiny hints of subtle adult humour that Shrek was famous for.

One thing I enjoyed about this production is that the voice cast (while still quite well known) was much smaller and more intimate than what I'd expected (from experience of watching Shrek), therefore it was easier to focus on the story rather than spend time sitting wondering which famous actors I was hearing and having it distract me throughout the feature. Selma Hayek and Antonio Banderas work brilliantly together and Zach Galifianakis is a natural voice artist in his performance of Humpty 'Alexander' Dumpty.

All in all a very enjoyable film and well worth the watch; definitely something adults and children can enjoy together and something that even adults will find reason to laugh out loud at.

Despite thinking this would be a little inferior to Shrek, I found it to be as good, if not better than Shrek! The storyline is very good, the charactors are very funny & whitty, & the animtion is superb! The main charactor of this films of course is "Puss In Boots", he steals the show all the way through, he is always making you laugh many a time through this movie. The action sequences are amazing! The animation combined with the fantastic storyline and the humor make for one of the best family animated movies around!

This film is not to be missed!

Now on to the product its self:

The film comes in a standard blu-ray box with three editions of the film. Blu-ray, DVD & a digital copy. Each edition coms in useful a lot. The Blu-ray is obviously the main version which contains masses of extras pluss amazing picture quality! DVD is useful for if you want to take it to a friends house or to watch on a portable DVD player, but the picture quality is obviously not as good. And the digital version is a nice addition too, you simply insert the DVD copy into your PC or Mac, a screen will come up, then you enter the code that is included inside the box. Then you select weather you want to use iTunes or Media Player, then within secconds its saved to your computer & ready to watch any time without a disc! The only flaw with it is that it is only DVD quality, but nevertheless, its a nice touch!

I reccomend this to anyone who is looking for an entertaining, fun family film!

Hope you too enjoy it!