Puss in Boots

all is known. but Christophere Walken change everything. in the most seductive manner. and it is not surprising.the role gives huge chance to explore the different nuances of a generous role. and the only problem could be only this generosity. because Jason Connery seems reduced at a nice sketch of his role and the royal court is far to be credible. but , against not the most inspired parts, it is a nice film. a young man and his cat. a meet. and a lot of adventures. Charles Perrault could be proud about a version of his fairy tale who use the humor as key to explore the different sides of a lovely story. and, in fact, this is only important thing in the case of this film who could be easily criticized if you ignore its small but significant virtues.

If you fast forward through the horrible singing, you will find a classic fairy tale underneath. Christopher Walken is very humorous and surprisingly good in the role. His trademark style of acting works well for the sly Puss in Boots. The other actors are well for their parts. I did not find any of the acting terribly fake or awkward. The king in particular appears a real dunce though, and I wonder if he is supposed to be. I can not remember the original tale. The special effects are typical of the eighties, but at least they are not overly fake like some of the computer generated fare that we see today. Overall, I recommend this movie for children and adults who are a child at heart.

This is one of my personal favorite Cannon Movietales because, believe it or not, it's full of great performances. Christopher Walken is a great actor, and who knew he did children's movies? Jason Connery (yes, Sean's son) does a great job too, although he does have a habbit to look a little embarrassed that he's in this. Carmela Marner is lovely as the princess and is (I believe) related to the director Eugene Marner. My rating: **** out of *****

Although none of the nine Cannon Movie Tale films are flawless, with the flaws varying in number and size, all of them are worth a viewing at least once. And while Puss in Boots is one of their lesser outings (with the weakest being The Emperor's New Clothes, and their best being Hansel and Gretel and Beauty and the Beast), it's not an exception.

The best thing about Puss in Boots is the performance of Christopher Walken as Puss, the singing is not the best but he clearly looks as though he's having a whale of a time here and he is so much fun to watch, performing with sly line delivery, a wonderful twitchiness (which is quite appropriate for a cat), fearless bravado and absolutely no signs of being embarrassed either. Carmela Marner is a charming Princess Vera, and has a truly infectious smile, while Yossi Graber is entertainingly buffoonish as the King without resorting to mugging too much. The dialogue does descend into over-silliness sometimes, but is witty and genuinely hilarious, so it would be a lie if I said that I wasn't entertained. The film is nicely photographed, the sets are nice and rustic if somewhat recycled of other Cannon films and the incidental score has the right amount of energy and whimsy.

Puss in Boots has several major problems though. For one thing, apart from the photography and the sets the low budget does show and it is generally one of Cannon's cheaper looking films. Some parts are dimly or gaudily lit and the costumes are garish and seldom flattering, looking like leftover material, but worst of all were the very cheap and out-of-date-looking (even for a film from the 80s) special effects (the Cannon film that fares the worst in this regard), especially the cat transformation and the under-sized ogre. While the incidental score is good, Puss in Boots does boast one of Cannon's weakest song scores, with only those for The Emperor's New Clothes being worse. The songs here are forgettable at best, some also go on for too long- feeling more like padding than anything else- and some of the lyrics are so dreadfully silly that they're enough to make one cringe, like the rhyming lyrics in the song offering marriage advice.

With the story, the basic details and characters are here but they didn't feel quite enough to sustain a feature length film, padding it out with forgettable and sometimes overlong songs and scenes that got too silly (i.e. the ineptitude of the guards), the silliness while entertaining did get too much at times and undermined the darker moments like the scene with Puss and the ogre. With the rest of the performances, most of the rest of the supporting turns mug pretty embarrassingly, the ogre is more unintentionally comical than sinister (coupled with his underwhelming look, he was one disappointing villain) but worst of all was Jason Connery who spends the entire running time looking hopelessly bland and dim-witted and devoid of any charm, his and Marner's chemistry is dull while his and Walken's only just about passes muster because Walken does such a great job here.

All in all, one of Cannon's weakest films but is still watchable for Walken's performance. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Although this was obviously a low-budget production, the performances and the songs in this movie are worth seeing. One of Walken's few musical roles to date. (he is a marvelous dancer and singer and he demonstrates his acrobatic skills as well - watch for the cartwheel!) Also starring Jason Connery. A great children's story and very likable characters.