PUSS IN BOOTS: The Last Wish

The film starts with Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) telling the tale of a shooting star that fell from the sky and landed somewhere unknown. The legend states that within the star is a single wish, waiting for someone worthy to grant it to.

Puss is enjoying his time as a living legend, throwing a party in the home of the Governor of Del Mar, and singing a song about what a great hero he is. When the Governor arrives, Puss makes a run for it, but not before outsmarting and outwitting the Governor and his guards. After setting off some fireworks, Puss awakens the Sleeping Giant of Del Mar. He engages in an epic battle with the one-eyed giant as it attempts to destroy the town. Puss uses his smarts to wrap a bell around the giant’s horns and use it to knock the beast unconscious. Just as Puss and the townspeople celebrate his victory, the bell falls and crushes Puss.

Puss wakes up in the office of the town Doctor (Anthony Mendez). He informs Puss that the bell killed him, but Puss doesn’t care because cats have nine lives. However, the Doctor makes Puss think about all the other times he’s died – in a bullfight, in a bad poker game, falling off a ledge, getting burned while making cookies (with a quick appearance from Gingy the Gingerbread Man), launched out of a cannon, crushed by a large weight, and an allergic reaction to shellfish. That means Puss is down to his last life. The Doctor suggests Puss retire from his life of adventure, but the cat is confident he has nothing to worry about.

While sitting in a pub, Puss is met by the mysterious Big Bad Wolf (Wagner Moura). He brandishes two scythes, but Puss is quick to draw his own sword…only to be just as quickly disarmed. The Wolf proves to be one of Puss’s most challenging foes, as he is fast and manages to cut Puss with his scythe. Puss flees and realizes he fears the Wolf, and he has no choice but to hang up his boots for good.

Following the Doctor’s suggestion, Puss is taken in by a cat lady named Mama Luna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). First, he buries his boots, hat, and cape as if he himself were dead for good, and then joins Mama Luna’s other cats that don’t take kindly to him. Puss becomes miserable in his now domesticated life. He is then met by a small dog posing as a cat (Harvey Guillen). Puss refers to the unnamed dog as “Perrito”.

Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears – Papa (Ray Winstone), Mama (Olivia Colman), and Baby (Samson Kayo) – make their way close to Mama Luna’s home, as they are bounty hunters, searching for Puss for a secret job. They arrive at Mama Luna’s and break in, demanding to know where Puss is. Baby picks up Puss, but since he’s grown a beard and doesn’t have his outfit, Goldi doesn’t recognize him. They find his “grave” and decide to carry on their mission with an alternative plan. Puss overhears them talk about how they needed him for a heist to steal a map to the Wishing Star, and the map is in the hands of Big Jack Horner (John Mulaney). Puss decides to return to his heroics and go after the map himself, as he realizes he can use his wish for his other lives back.

Puss sneaks into Big Jack’s compound, but he is followed by Perrito, who thinks he can help Puss. Jack is a collector of various magical artifacts from other fairy tales (Cinderella’s glass slipper, poison apples, the growing cookie from Alice in Wonderland, etc), and he hopes to use the map to find the Wishing Star so he can possess all the magic in the world. Puss makes a grab for the map, but is interrupted by his former flame, Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek). The two fight for the map, as Kitty had been previously recruited by Goldi and the Bears for the job, but she was going to double-cross them anyway, and she is also angry with Puss for a recent betrayal. Jack spots them and goes after them, but Puss and Kitty hop on a carriage driven by Perrito to get them away from Jack’s goons. Jack then gathers his Baker’s Dozen of henchmen, along with necessary magical artifacts, to get the map back. Just as the heroes get away, Puss is frightened when he appears to see the Wolf in the shadows.

Puss, Kitty, and Perrito stop running and continue on their journey to the Star by entering the Dark Forest through a portal. They find that the map can alter the environment depending on who is holding it. When Puss and Kitty grab it, their paths are destined to be dark and dangerous, but when Perrito holds it, the path turns into a happy rainbow land due to his endless optimism. The cats decide to let him hold the map. They then notice Goldi and the Bears dropping down, forcing them to move faster.

On their journey, the trio has to get through a Pocket Full of Posies, a field of giant flowers that attack Puss and Kitty, but Perrito sniffing the flowers endears them to him. As he puts it, the cats have to “stop and smell the roses.” Goldi and the Bears, plus Jack and his henchmen, also come across the Posies, but they have less luck and some of Jack’s men are eaten or outright killed, while Goldi and the Bears are able to fight their way through.

The main trio keeps moving, with Perrito telling Puss and Kitty his backstory – his original family would routinely try to get rid of him, as he though they were just pranks and he kept coming back, so they finally managed to get rid of him for good by throwing him in a sock with a stone into the river. While Puss and Kitty are mortified by how sad his story is, Perrito sees the silver lining in everything. He ends up wandering away from the group and into a brightly colored forest, where Jack and his goons are waiting and grab Perrito. Another fight breaks out after Goldi and the Bears show up, and Jack’s goons get killed again when he hits them with unicorn horns that make them burst into confetti. During the struggle, Goldi and the Bears take the map from the trio. Jack also meets a talking Cricket (you know who) who tries to find the good in Jack and be his conscience. It doesn’t work out.

Puss ends up running as the environment changes into a darker and scarier forest, where he fears that the Wolf is following him. Perrito finds Puss and tries to comfort him. He confesses to Perrito that he needs the wish to save his life. Puss also explains to Perrito what he did that made Kitty angry with him – he left her at the altar on their wedding day because he felt there was no room for anyone in his life of adventure. Kitty overhears Puss express regret for hurting her, and she decides to help him back up.

When Goldi opens the map, she and the Bears are led to their old cottage where they first found Goldi after she snuck in. Being an orphan, Goldi never had a real family until the Bears took her in. They are set to let her have the wish for herself. Meanwhile, the trio sneak into the cottage, with Puss managing to swipe the map back until they are found again. As they try to escape, Goldi grabs Perrito as a hostage while the environment continues shifting. Puss grabs the map, and it traps him inside a giant crystal cave. He shows the map to Kitty so that she may track Perrito down while Puss tries to find a way out.

Perrito sits as Goldi and Baby argue and exchange insults, but he tells them that they have the perfect family that he wishes he always had. As the Bears start taking a liking to Perrito, Kitty manages to swipe Perrito and get away. Goldi and the Bears get lost while trying to find their way back, leading to an argument where Goldi says her wish is to have a real family, as in, a human one. This breaks the Bears’ hearts, but Mama promises to help Goldi get her wish if it will make her happy.

Jack uses his remaining henchmen as a human bridge to the next stop, with all but one of them falling to their deaths when he tries to bring the cart across. The Cricket realizes Jack is a horrible person, just as he gets flicked off Jack’s shoulder.

In the cave, Puss speaks to his original eight lives, who all come off like smug jerks. He realizes he is enjoying his current life with Kitty and Perrito, but his epiphany is interrupted by the Wolf showing up. He tells Puss that he has been there for his previous deaths, and that he is Death himself, come to collect Puss’s soul. Puss once again runs away in fear.

Puss makes it to the location of the Star, and he begins to speak the incantation (“I wish I may, I wish I might…”) to make the wish. Kitty and Perrito show up, with Kitty thinking Puss is betraying her again after they discussed sharing the wish. Puss tries to explain that Death is coming for him, just as Goldi and the Bears and Jack and his henchman show up. In their fight and struggle for the map, the Star begins rising off the ground and creates a forcefield that spits people out. The henchman gets sucked out, and Baby is nearly pulled up as well, but Goldi sacrifices her chance to get the wish in order to save Baby, as she realizes the Bears are her true family. Kitty knocks Jack into his bottomless bag to save Perrito.

The Wolf then returns and traps Puss in a ring of fire. He taunts Puss over his fear of death and that he would be taking the coward’s way out to use his wish to cheat death. Looking back at the time he has spent with Kitty and Perrito, he decides he will make his last life count, so he picks up his sword and duels with the Wolf. After a fierce fight, Puss manages to disarm the Wolf. He becomes enraged, as he was hoping to take Puss as a roguish hero unafraid of death as opposed to who he is now, but he decides that another time will come for him to see Puss again.

The Wolf leaves, but Jack emerges from his bag after eating the growing cookie. He grabs the map and begins to try and make his wish, but Perrito attempts to distract him using cute puppy eyes after Kitty showed him how to do it. It doesn’t work on Jack because he’s such a jerk, but it was only to buy time for Goldi to throw Puss and Kitty toward Jack while the Bears join in on the fight. Puss, Kitty, and Goldi tear the map apart, which causes the Star to break down. Jack attempts to piece the map back together, but is missing one, which is in the hands of the Cricket, who uses Jack’s phoenix to burn it and completely destroy the map. The Star fully breaks down and absorbs Jack before shooting back into the sky and exploding. Goldi and the Bears part with Puss and his friends. Perrito decides to stick with that as his name, as he is happy to call Puss and Kitty his new family. They sit and watch the stars together.

Some days later, the Governor is attempting to go on vacation, only to find that his boat has been stolen, and he knows who did it. Puss, Kitty, and Perrito set sail for new adventures and, as Puss says, to visit old friends. The camera then pans over to the kingdom of Far Far Away, presumably so Puss can visit a certain mean green ogre.