Puss in Boots (2011)

Nominated for Best Animated Film    Ha!  Finally got all of at least one category this year!

This was one of the few nominees that Rob was actually interested in seeing so I had to jump on it when he offered.  I probably would not have watched it on my own unless people raved about it, because generally spin-offs of animated movies do not do well.  'Shameless cash grabs' I believe I usually call them.

This one was better than most.  The Dreamworks people have been really good about picking better properties to develop lately which is probably due to the influx of Shrek cash.  If they had to pick a spin-off character, Puss is a much easier pill to swallow than, say, Donkey.  /shudder

We weren't entirely certain about where this fell in the established canon but I'm going to say that it was pre-Shrek.  Puss (Antonio Banderas) is a wanted criminal, slinking around seducing housecats, and looking for his Big Score in order to right a mysterious wrong in his past.  He hears a rumor that notorious brigands Jack (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jill (Amy Sedaris) have found magic beans.  He is immediately intrigued and sets out to lift them off the bickering couple.  Unfortunately, he is not the only one after the prize and a masked cat ruins his attempt.  He chases the cat burglar to the Glitter Box and engages in a Dance Fight.  The villain is unmasked and turns out to be Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), a master thief.  She is working for Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifinakis), once a childhood friend of Puss' but now a sworn enemy.  Humpty entreats Puss to put aside their animosity and band together to steal the magic beans, plant them, climb the resulting beanstalk, and steal the golden goose of legend.

It's a cute film that will probably appeal to the Shrek crowd.  I found some of the themes to be slightly dark for a kids film but they should probably learn about betrayal early on, to save them from being surprised later.  Rob and I would have sworn up and down that Patton Oswalt was the voice of the Keyser Soze-wannabe egg, but it was the Hangover guy.  That was pretty much the only thing that surprised us.  Also, Guillermo del Toro has a really deep voice.  I wasn't expecting that.