Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Oscar Project 2012: Puss in Boots

Movie: Puss in Boots

Outlaws Puss in Boots and Humpty Dumpty team up to steal the magic beans from Jack and Jill and then steal the golden goose from the beanstalk in order to clear their names and right a wrong the did to . . . the town and orphanage where they grew up? It makes slightly more sense in the movie than in that description, I promise. Of course, there's more going on than Puss knows - you'll see the plot twist coming a mile away, but the intended audience of young children might be more surprised. They did a good job of making Puss anthropomorphic while still keeping him recognizably a cat, and some of the cat stuff is very cute. Some of the jokes are funny. And there's a fairly nuanced look at friendship and duty and vengeance and redemption. I mean, fairly nuanced given that we're talking about a cat and a giant talking egg. On the other hand, it has shades of that common kids' movie issue of giving mannerisms seen as stereotypically gay to characters who do bad things and then leaving this wholly unexamined.

Availability: This was widely available a few months ago; I caught it at a second-run theater last night. It will be on DVD in late February, but I didn't want to worry about getting it from Netflix with so small a window.

Nominated In:
Animated Feature Film: You know . . . I don't know. Maybe growing up in Disney's Second Golden Age gave me impossible standards for animated films. This movie was fine, and I certainly wouldn't be outraged if it won, but it didn't really strike me as anything special.

Movies left: 48; Days left: 27
Have seen 21% of movies and 34% of nominations.
Movie posts I owe you: 10

No comments:

Post a Comment