It’s been 11 years since the last Puss In Boots movie, and 12 years since the last proper instalment of Shrek franchise. With such a long time, it makes sense that this latest entry is growing up with its audience. Puss In Boots The Last Wish is arguably the best Dreamworks Animation movie in years, perhaps since 2019’s How To Your Dragon The Hidden World.

It’s funny, surprisingly dark and mature, as well as features a refreshing new animation style inspired by Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse.

Honour Among Thieves

Puss In Boots The Last Wish features the return of Antonio Banderas as the titular Puss In Boots The Last Wish. In this movie, we find Puss in an existential crisis of sorts, discovering that he only has a single life left out of his nine feline lives. He then retires after almost getting killed by the Big Bad Wolf (Wagner Moura), but later discovers the existence of The Last Wish. He then goes on another adventure to reach The Last Wish, but it’s a race with other fairy tale creatures who want the same thing, including Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears (Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone, and Samson Kayo), Big Jack Horner (John Mulaney), and Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek Pinault).

While the movie is expectedly hilarious with plenty of funny jokes sprinkled around, it is also surprisingly dark and mature at the heart of its tale. The movie covers subject matter that rarely gets featured in animated movies targeted towards children, such as the meditation on one’s mortality, fear of death and failure and commitment, and more. There are also tense moments in the movie, with actual stakes for Puss In Boots, especially every time the Big Bad Wolf appears. All of that is rare for an American animated movie usually targeted towards younger viewers and viewers of all ages. I don’t remember any of the Shrek movies or 2011’s Puss In Boots ever making me so emotional before, so that’s a plus for Puss In Boots The Last Wish.

Another highlight of the movie is its animation. It’s inspired by Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse in a lot of ways. I’m impressed by how refreshingly dynamic the camera perspectives are during the action scenes in this movie, comparable to that of Japanese anime. Also, the animation style has an extremely stylized look that makes the movie lean even more into fairy tale aesthetics, making the movie even more unique when compared to DreamWorks Animation’s previous works. It’s great to see these massive studios start to experiment more with their big-budget animated movies.

The whole cast delivers great performances, especially Antonio Banderas, who slips into his feline coat like the Shrek movies and Puss In Boots were just released yesterday, and Harvey Guillén as Perrito, who provides the comic relief and acts as the emotional glue in this movie. Wagner Moura is menacing as the Big Bad Wolf, John Mulaney is diabolical as Big Jack Horner and Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears (Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone, and Samson Kayo) are funny as heck.

The Shrek Universe Lives On

Puss In Boots The Last Wish is one of the best DreamWorks Animation movies in recent years, and one of the best in 2022 as well. This bodes well for future movies from the studio. Plus, longtime fans of the Shrek franchise will be happy to see another entry in their beloved series, and without spoiling anything, they will want to watch Puss In Boots The Last Wish for its ending.

FINAL SCORE: 90/100

We attended an early screener of Puss In Boots The Last Wish courtesy of United International Pictures Malaysia. Puss In Boots The Last Wish is slated to premiere on 22 December 2022 in Malaysian cinemas.