Puss in Boots - The Last Wish: Bringing interesting concepts to children

  It has been difficult to bring my oldest daughter to the movies since we have another one at home, a toddler, so we can't go all together for now to the theatres. However, once it is possible, I went with her yesterday since I was still off from work. The only kids' movie there was "Puss in Boots". She is already used to this character since she watched Shrek movies and she loves fairy tales. I also watched all Shrek movies; they are usually fun and cute.

  The movie starts a little bit too childish for me, with the cat hero fighting and winning everything, at that moment, I thought: "well it is ok at least my daughter will have fun with a silly movie". However, there was a twist in there. The cat dies, for him, he was going to be immortal to live forever, but he realizes that he woke up in his last life. After that a doctor recommends he retire and live well his last life. He passed through a denial stage, which is pretty common in humanity when we receive bad news right? This denial stage evolves after he receives an interesting visit: Death. In this case, Death is a badass red-eye white wolf. My daughter was terrified by this Death personification. After a fight with death, Puss in boots saw that he can't beat it, so he decides to accept the doctor recommendation to retire himself. But with another twist, he found a way to get his 9 lives back through a quest. Another interesting point about this Death character is that despite of being a very fearsome figure, the movie didn't put it as the main villain of the movie. In lots of grown-up movies the fight between human x death is portrayed, like in Bergman's movie "The Seventh Seal". But I don't remember a kid's movie with this type of confrontation. The movie ends with the wolf saying "See you soon" for the cat and he also knows that he will die not at that moment, but for sure he would die somewhen in the future

White wolf personification of death

  Despite being a fearsome creature in the movie, it brought me a nice moment to chat with my daughter about death, since it is a concept that she is still getting used to. Another interesting concept from the movie is to show that many things that we wish makes us forget to live our today and to be happy with what we currently have. The movie brings the example of Goldilocks that lives with the three bears. Even though she is happy living with the bear family she wishes to live again with her human family. So another concept to bring to kids is about the family concept, which we can have different families, and sometimes even not been raised by our biological parents, we can still have real parents that love us.

  In addition to these interesting concepts, the movie is fun, with lots of action and jokes that maybe some kids won't understand, but we as adults yes. Like when the talking cricket appears, and one movie character, Little Jack Horner, asks him what is his power, he answers: "My power is to make judgments on you and make you feel bad". Also, interesting voices were added in the great cast that includes Antonio Banderas as Puss in the Boots and Salma Hayek as Kitty soft paws. Here is a trailer from the movie: