The hairs on your arms and legs raise as you realize: Death is chasing your tail. Now you have to try and find the Wishing Star before Death finds you. 

On Dec. 21, 2022, another solo movie starring Shrek’s famous cat companion,“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” hit theaters. Starring Antonio Banderas as the voice of Puss in Boots, the viewers get to see how losing eight lives changed the once arrogant cat into a vulnerable kitty with fear running through his veins, facing the once fearless hero’s biggest fear: fear itself.

The movie starts with Puss in Boots having a party at the governor’s house, singing his favorite song “Fearless Hero” to a crowd of adoring fans. Puss is not afraid when a giant attacks him and fights him to the death. While the giant was defeated, Puss still lost his life, causing him to go to the town’s doctor where he learns he is down to his last life. While Puss is drinking cream at the bar, he faces what he believes is just another bounty hunter and remembers how he is running out of time, causing him to hide away at Mama Luna’s Cat Rescue. While at Mama Luna’s (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) Puss learns that the legend of the Wishing Star is true after overhearing Goldi (Florence Pugh) and the three bears, Mama Bear (Olivia Colman), Papa Bear (Ray Winstone), and Baby Bear (Samson Kayo), talking about stealing the map leading to the star from Jack Horner (John Mulaney). In that moment, he makes the decision to go after the map himself. 

When starting the movie, it seems like a normal Pixar film, but it was surprising to see Perrito (Harvey Guillen) cursing throughout the movie, even if it was meant to be innocent.Fortunately for the kids, every time Perrito was cursing there was a beep, so viewers wouldn’t hear the bad words. This effect, however, made the movie seem like a test project, to see if they were allowed to even include such a thing in a kids film.

Apart from the bleeped-out cursing, the change in animation was an ideal aspect of the film, since  changing the looks of the characters made all the fight scenes seem like they came out of a comic book. Every great animated fight had its own comic book-like fights, giving both comic book fans and animation enthusiasts a great scene.

Although there were many characters, each one was equally important even if they all had different backstories. However, this didn’t overwhelm the viewers. For example, Perrito, one of the characters and Puss’s “therapy” dog, mentioned how his family tried to get rid of him, and yet he kept a positive attitude throughout the whole movie. This left a really impactful message, showing viewers that even if you’ve had bad times in the past, you can still keep a positive attitude and enjoy what you have now. 

Overall, the movie exceeded expectations and had a great storyline. The message was really effective and the movie was enjoyable to watch. Each character was unique and funny in their own way, making every scene enjoyable.