“Puss in Boots” arrived in 2011 as a spin-off of a spin-off: a side character from Shrek 2, handed his own origin story, his own love interest, and his own heist. DreamWorks Animation produced it. Chris Miller directed, from a script by Tom Wheeler, Brian Lynch and William Davies. It runs 90 minutes and it is, by any fair measure, a good time that never quite becomes a great one.
Trailer, via Universal Kids.
A Cat, a Fugitive, and a Pair of Boots
Antonio Banderas returns as the voice of Puss in Boots, a Spanish-speaking anthropomorphic cat named for his signature footwear. He is a fugitive on the run from the law, seeking to restore his lost honor. The film is set long before he met Shrek, and it treats that gap as its whole reason to exist.
The tagline promises “Live for danger. Fight for justice. Pray for mercy.” The movie delivers the first two more convincingly than the third.
Jack and Jill Have the Beans
Puss learns one night that the murderous outlaw couple Jack and Jill hold the magic beans he has long sought. Those beans can lead him to a giant’s castle that legend says contains valuable golden goose eggs. Billy Bob Thornton voices Jack. Amy Sedaris voices Jill. They are the film’s clearest pleasure: a married pair of killers who bicker like any other married pair of killers.
When Puss tries to steal the beans at their hideout, he is interrupted. A female cat named Kitty Softpaws was hired to steal the same beans. Salma Hayek voices her. The job’s backer is Humpty Alexander Dumpty, a talking egg voiced by Zach Galifianakis, and Puss’ long-estranged childhood friend from the orphanage in San Ricardo.
San Ricardo and the Failed Robbery
Puss tells Kitty his origin story, and it is the film’s spine. He has been on the run ever since Humpty tricked him into helping with what turned out to be a failed bank robbery, back when they were teenagers. That betrayal is the wound the whole plot is built to close.
Humpty eventually persuades Puss to join him and Kitty in finding the beans and retrieving the golden eggs. Puss and Kitty’s relationship turns romantic. Despite his initial grudge, Puss slowly warms to Humpty. The trio steals the beans and plants them in the desert.
Up the Beanstalk, Into the Castle
They ride the beanstalk into the clouds and enter the giant’s castle. There, Humpty reveals the giant died a long time ago. The group avoids the “Great Terror” who guards the Golden Goose and the golden eggs. They find the eggs too heavy to carry, so they decide to steal the Golden Goose itself after watching it lay them.
They escape the castle and cut down the beanstalk. Then Jack and Jill ambush them, and Puss is knocked unconscious. He wakes assuming Humpty and Kitty were kidnapped, and tracks the wagon back to San Ricardo. The kidnapping, he learns, was staged. That twist is the film’s best idea and its most rushed one.
A Voice Cast Doing Real Work
The supporting roster is deep and strange in the right ways:
- Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots
- Salma Hayek as Kitty Softpaws
- Zach Galifianakis as Humpty Dumpty
- Billy Bob Thornton as Jack
- Amy Sedaris as Jill
- Constance Marie as Imelda
- Guillermo del Toro as Comandante / Hombre del bigote
- Conrad Vernon as Raoul / Soldier
Banderas is the engine. He plays the cat as a performer who has already decided he is a legend, and the joke holds because he never winks. Hayek gives Kitty a flat, unimpressed delivery that cuts against him cleanly. Galifianakis has the harder job, since Humpty must be pitiable and scheming at once, and he lands the scheming more often than the pity.
The Origin Story Problem
“Puss in Boots” was first announced as a direct-to-video film, titled “Puss in Boots: The Story of an Ogre Killer,” scheduled for 2008. In October 2006 it was redeveloped as a theatrical release, with Miller joining. You can feel that history in the finished film. It has the polish of a theatrical feature and the stakes of a side project.
The film premiered October 16, 2011, aboard the cruise ship Allure of the Seas, and opened in the United States on October 28, distributed by Paramount Pictures. It grossed $555 million against a $130 million production budget. At the 84th Academy Awards it was nominated for Best Animated Feature. A non-canon television spin-off, “The Adventures of Puss in Boots,” premiered in January 2015. A sequel, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” was released in 2022.
What the Box Office Actually Says
The $555 million is the number that decided everything after it. It bought the 2022 sequel and it validated the idea that a Shrek supporting player could carry a franchise alone. That is a business verdict, not an artistic one. The money says audiences wanted more of this cat. It does not say this movie earned it.
What earns it, where anything does, is San Ricardo. The orphanage, the failed robbery, the friend who sold him out — that is real material, and the film knows it. It just keeps interrupting itself to get to the next set piece.
A Heist Wearing a Fairy-Tale Costume
“Puss in Boots” is a 90-minute heist movie wearing a fairy-tale costume, and the costume fits better than the heist. The beanstalk climb, the castle, the Great Terror: all of it moves, none of it lingers. The betrayal at the center is the only thing with weight, and the film treats it as a plot turn rather than a wound.
It is worth watching for Banderas, for Thornton and Sedaris, and for a Kitty Softpaws who deserved more screen time than she got here. It is not worth watching for the story, which is thin and resolved too fast. The sequel, released in 2022, would revisit this world. This one just points at it.
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