A winning vocal performance by Antonio Banderas — a zesty, winking turn that jibes with the persona he has chosen to embrace especially for American audiences, that of an exotic, comedically accented “other” — anchors the swashbuckling animated family adventure Puss in Boots, a peppy, character-rooted romp that thankfully abandons some of the more frenzied and forced in-joke references of the Shrek series, which first introduced its main character.
Stylistically, Puss in Boots embraces some of Tex Avery’s manic sensibilities (a character leaving a shadow cut-out of himself when crashing through a barrier, for instance), and is cheekily self-aware without being postmodern; various chase sequences are superlative examples of action animation, meanwhile, goosed up even further by the movie’s stereoscopic 3-D presentation. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Paramount/DreamWorks, PG, 90 minutes)