Antonio Banderas obviously loves playing this darn cat.
As the swashbuckling Puss in Boots, the actor’s voice reverberates with the unrestrained enthusiasm, charm and boisterous joy lacking in his flops “Dolittle” and “Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.” He’s animated in more ways than one.
The guy treats this self-absorbed Spanish kitty who constantly speaks in the third person like it’s his Hamlet. And, you know what? It just might be.
Running time: 100 minutes Rated PG (action/violence, rude humor/language, and some scary moments.) <br>In theaters
Puss, who appeared in 2004’s “Shrek 2,” is back after his stand-alone spinoff 12 years ago in “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.” And it’s fine! The family film doesn’t take the franchise or studio DreamWorks to new heights of invention, but it does have Oscar winner Olivia Colman voice a Cockney bear.
The stakes are high for our favorite feline. After a musical start with a song called “Who is Your Favorite Fearless Hero,” in which Puss is offed in a whoopsie accident, he learns from a doctor that he’s burned through eight of his nine lives and is now fully mortal. “My prescription,” the doc says, “No more adventures. You need to retire.”
And so, the restless rodent-catcher hangs up his hat and moves into Mama Lana’s Cat Rescue, which is an episode of “Animal Hoarders” waiting to happen. Like David Letterman, Puss grows a beard. He also makes friends with a nameless stray dog they call Perro (Harvey Guillén), who’s pretending to be a cat to fit in. The extremely cute character throws dog lovers a bone.
His twilight years are shaken up when Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the three bears (Colman, Ray Winstone and Samson Kayo) barge in. They tell Puss about a magical wishing star that could save him — if he gets to it first. So, alongside Perro and old flame Kitty (Salma Hayek), he races against Goldi and a bulbous Lewis Carroll-esque baddie named Jack Horner (John Mulaney) to reach the enchanted object.
Yes, it’s your typical Macguffin, with everybody chasing down a trinket, but a fairly creative one with a lot of good jokes. The comic-book-style action sequences also set co-directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado’s movie apart from the litter.
The No. 1 reason to watch, though, is Banderas’ top-notch voice performance. If only more A-listers treated their animated film roles as more than a pet project.