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Rating: “Life is precious only because it ends. You mortals don't know how lucky you are."
Let's take a nice leap back in time: it's 2001 and the (at the time) timid Dreamworks releases the film that would become the ultimate work of Western pop animation, "Shrek". The protagonist of this irreverent fairy tale is an ogre, ugly and mean (but only on the surface), who finds himself reluctantly having to take on the role of the hero.
A worldwide success that brought all the cynicism and vulgar language of the millennial generation to the screen, marking a before and after. The film soon saw the release of a sequel and took on the guise of a saga. A cast that became more varied and multifaceted, always drawing from the fairy tale world and debunking it.
So here we start with one of those characters taken from the aforementioned world, namely "Puss in Boots", whom for convenience, we will simply call Cat. A funny and charismatic comic sidekick, he quickly gained a huge fan base, so much so that he earned his own spin-off: the fairytale world is present, but it is just a subtext to create space for an action film, in which Shrek's crude and irreverent language is diminished.
In short, it turns out to be a real nonsense.
We are in 2011.
Eleven years pass: a decade that sees the arrival of new forms of animation and a consolidation of the language and humor spawned by Shrek, which in the meantime has become a cult saga.
The final blow arrives in 2018, with the adaptation of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", a Marvel masterpiece that takes animation to a higher level, pissing all over everything that came before it.
Okay, but what is all this leading to?
We're getting to it.
Let's quickly leap through time and arrive in 2022. What happened in the meantime? Pandemic, economic crisis, social fractures now irreparable, growing uncertainties, etc. Conditions that reminded us of our human nature, our mortality, and the emptiness with which we fill our time.
Yes, yes, I know: all seen before, all said before.
But what if we let a cute character like no other convey these things and address them to a young audience?
"Puss in Boots: The Last Wish".
Eleven years after that nonsense prequel, the story resumes with Cat and his adventures. A charismatic hero, a valiant warrior, arrogant and unbeatable: someone who, as he says, laughs in Death's face. And rightly so, because our hero boasts the beauty of nine lives, which he quickly consumes until he reaches the last.
The wisest choice at this point would be to completely ditch the role of the legend and to settle, fully enjoying the calm and serene peace of this last life.
A choice, however, irreconcilable with what Cat is and represents: an authentic legend, in short, of which tales are told and sung and that everyone loves.
Stubborn and arrogant, our hero will soon have to face a bounty hunter who wants to take his last life; an apparently invincible, frightening, supernatural being that will completely demolish the confidence of our protagonist, forcing him into a desperate escape.
The only solution is to head to a magical place where there is the possibility to make a wish: from here begins a desperate gold rush, in which Cat will have to face some hilarious characters from fairy tale mythology and popular folklore, constantly pursued by the specter of that monstrous and supernatural figure who wants his head more than anything else.
Now, beyond the animation, which is of the highest level, what really surprises is the tone of the narration: what appears to be a childish and rollicking film, with a character who seemed doomed to live off his own two-dimensionality, is actually a bitter product, with deeply dark tones.
The vivid and vibrant colors, the enchanted and fantastic atmospheres accompanying the protagonist's miraculous adventures find a heavy clash with the dark and cold tones of the most introspective and "human" moments, just as the carefreeness and childhood dauntlessness are overshadowed by the real fear of death and the awareness of the end.
Cat is forced to grow up, as are the characters surrounding him and his audience, carrying the weight of very hard years.
It is no longer the epic of great duels and immense feats, but the epic of the everyday, constantly fighting the fear of death, giving value to the little things, without forgetting how limited our time on this earth is.
All this conveyed by a cat, who wears boots.
Unmissable.
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