Producer: Mark Swift   Director: Joel Crawford   Screenplay: Paul Fisher and Tommy Swerdlow   Cast: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek Pinault, Olivia Colman, Harvey Guillén, Samson Kayo, Anthony Mendez, Wagner Moura, John Mulaney, Florence Pugh, Da’Vine Roy Randolph, Ray Winstone, Conrad Vernon and Cody Cameron   Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: B+

Once you get over the realization that this sequel to the 2011 spin-off from the “Shreck” series is about mortality, you, and your kids, should have a fine time at “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” a darker but surprisingly engaging take on the character’s quest to remake himself under threat of impending demise, powered by a typically high-octane, self-mocking turn by Antonio Banderas and splendid DreamWorks animation.  It also plugs nicely into the fractured fairy-tale approach of the franchise.

The picture starts flamboyantly with a sequence in which Puss (voiced by Banderas), the egomaniacal swashbuckling cat, takes over a corrupt governor’s estate for a people’s fiesta and then defeats a gigantic monster.  Unfortunately, while taking his bows he’s clobbered by a huge bell and dies.

That doesn’t bother Puss overmuch, as he’s died before, and like all felines having nine lives he’s come back to life.  But in discussion with the local doctor (Anthony Mendez), he’s persuaded in a hilarious montage that he’s used up eight of them, and advised to give up his reckless ways and settle down.  Still he’s unconvinced until an encounter with menacing Big Bad Wolf (Wagner Moura), a sinister blade-slinger who identifies himself as Death, sends him scurrying away in fear.  Puss has become a scaredy-cat. 

Burying his distinctive outfit—including those famous boots—he takes refuge with loopy cat lady Mama Luna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), among whose brood he finds a disguised mutt later named Perrito (Harvey Guillén), an incessantly upbeat pooch who wants to be a therapy dog and becomes his unwanted pal.  Puss feels humiliated and despondent over his change of fortune, but his hopes rise when he learns that a Wishing Star has landed in the Dark Forest; it will grant its finder his fondest dream—in his case, of course, the restoration of his lives.

So he retrieves his duds and sets off, but not alone.  Perrito tags along unasked, and soon they’re joined by Puss’s erstwhile fiancée Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek Pinault), a butt-kicking type whom he left waiting at the altar years before.  Both he and she are after the map to the Wishing Star, which puts them into competition with the slapstick gang of Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the three bears, Mama (Olivia Colman), Papa (Ray Winstone) and Baby (Samson Kayo) on the one hand, and the evil “Big” Jack Horner (John Mulaney) on the other.  All want to be first at the Star, and to snatch the wish that goes along with it. 

As you might expect, the complications of the chase are many—there are kidnappings, rescues, and confrontations galore, most smartly paced (by director Joel Crawford and editor James Ryan) and wittily written (by Paul Fisher and Tommy Swerdlow). Along the way, of course, Puss must learn to conquer his fears and overcome his selfishness, and there are lessons coming to his companions and competitors as well.  Other characters also make appearances, with an especially amusing one by a cricket who, in the voice of Kevin McCann, sounds an awful lot like Jimmy Stewart; he’s Horner’s conscience, but proves even less successful than Jiminy in that department.  (Pinocchio also shows up, briefly.)  The animation is vivid, with a colorful production design by Nate Wragg, and Heitor Pereira’s score aligns genially with the visuals.

Banderas anchors the movie, sending up his own image as both lothario and Zorro with zest while capturing Puss’s emotional doldrums with equal aplomb.  Everyone else enters into the spirit of things as well, making the most of dialogue with a lot more hits than misses.  Be forewarned, though, that some of the scenes with the Wolf might be a mite scary for the youngest viewers, and that the inspiration behind some of the carefully staged fight sequences will escape them; there are references to other movies here that assume you’ll recognize them.  If you do, you’ll smile more broadly.  If not, no matter.

Especially after the disappointment of Disney’s “Strange World,” this marks a refreshing change.  In spite of revolving around death, “Puss” is invigorating, the answer to a holiday wish for an animated film the whole family can enjoy.  

Producers: Laurence Mark, Peter Czernin and Graham Broadbent   Director: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre   Screenwriter: David Magee   Cast: Emma Corrin, Jack O’Connell, Matthew Duckett, Joely Richardson, Faye Marsay, Ella Hunt, Anthony Brophy and Nicholas Bishop   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: C+

D.H. Lawrence’s 1928 novel, his last, is regarded as a classic today, included as required reading in the syllabi of many college courses in English literature.  It was not always so, of course:  deemed obscene not merely for its adultery-centered plot but its then-explicit sex scenes and rough language, it was effectively banned in many countries—including the U.K. and the US—until the 1960s, after court decisions liberated it from puritanical infamy. 

Previous screen and television adaptations have been neither numerous nor particularly well-received.  This newest one is perhaps the best of the lot, but it fails to convey what many have argued to be the novel’s deeper nuances and themes.  Except for the occasional explicit sex scene, it’s fairly typical Masterpiece Theatre-style fare, and then not an example of that genre’s highest quality.  Perhaps “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” is simply one of those books whose peculiar genius can’t be captured on film, although that probably won’t stop its admirers from trying.

In any event, David Magee and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre have taken an approach that’s faithful to the central domestic drama while slighting what might be called some of Lawrence’s broader socio-economic concerns.  Constance Reid (Emma Corrin) weds Sir Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett) just as he’s departing for the trenches of World War I.  When he returns, his body has been shattered, and even after treatment and rehabilitation he’s paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair.

Among those whom Clifford hires in his effort to restore the family estate of Wragby in the Midlands, near the mining village of Tevershall which the Chatterleys dominate and far from the London where free-spirited Connie had been raised, is handsome ex-soldier Oliver Mellors (Jack O’Connell) as gamekeeper.  As Clifford becomes increasingly obsessed with developing a career as a writer and increasing profit from the mines, and Lady Chatterley is freed of many of the duties of caring for him by the arrival of housekeeper Mrs. Bolton (Joely Richardson), Connie and Oliver will stumble into a torrid affair.  Her feelings for him grow not only more passionate but emotionally deeper, and she becomes pregnant.

Clifford had already raised the possibility that she might have a child with another man that could be passed off as his heir, but the class differences make his acceptance of one by Mellors an impossibility.  Connie, moreover, wants to divorce him to be with her lover, and he adamantly refuses.  The situation is further complicated by the fact that gossip has already been circulating about the affair, and that Mellors is also married but separated from a wife, who is happy to fan the scandal’s flames.  Some attention is given to Connie’s accusation that her husband’s treatment of the miners in a quest to industrialize his business operation is inhumane, but the film downplays Lawrence’s concern with these broader issues of class and economics, concentrating on the personal side of things.  It also opts for an ending considerably more optimistic than the book’s ambiguous one.

The adjective that most accurately describes the filmmakers’ treatment of this narrative is adequate.  The acting is committed, but despite the attempt to give the scenes of Corrin and O’Connell in bed together, or gamboling in the grass, an erotic charge, the two never develop a powerfully sensual chemistry.  (Cinematographer Benoît Delhomme and editor Géraldine Mangenot are also put through their paces making them explicit but not excessively so; still, viewers are advised that the nudity is considerable.)  Both come across as a bit pallid, but compared to Duckett, who plays Chatterley as a moustache-twirling snob, they’re generally acceptable.  The best work comes from Richardson, who coincidentally played Lady Chatterley in Ken Russell’s 1993 British mini-series opposite Sean Bean, which until now has probably been the best-regarded adaptation.  The film looks fine, with Karen Wakefield’s production design and Emma Fryer’s costumes fine; Isabella Summers’ background score adds a modernist touch that, in this context, comes across as incongruous, even if it’s fitting in terms of the novel.

In the end, this version of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” is generally true to Lawrence in the obvious ways, but not in the more subtle ones.