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Review of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Heitor Pereira)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you are an established enthusiast of Heitor
Pereira's more contemporary animation scores and can forgive his
decision to emphasize his own styles over the narrative of the
franchise.
Avoid it... if you expect to hear practically anything from Henry Jackman's effective parody score for the prior film, Pereira starting fresh without any of the overt James Horner references or their associated themes.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: (Heitor Pereira)
Twenty years after its debut and after an eleven-year break, the
Shrek franchise fights on. A sequel to the 2011 spin-off Puss
in Boots had long been in the works, but studio restructuring and
countless script rewrites delayed Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
until 2022. By this point, the titular character has retired due to
expending eight of his nine lives, but his time as a domesticated house
cat is interrupted when old villains complicate his life. Teaming up
with his romantic partner from the first film, Puss in Boots goes on a
journey to find a wishing star that can grant him some of his lives
back. Redemption and mortality are the themes of the movie, and both
critics and audiences responded favorably, setting the table for another
entry in the franchise to follow. Several production elements changed
significantly for the sequel, most notably the animation style, but a
different approach awaited the music for Puss in Boots: The Last
Wish as well. Whereas the 2011 score by Henry Jackman was a
traditional, loving ode to the two Zorro scores by James Horner and
Ennio Morricone's vintage Western techniques (albeit filtered through
Hans Zimmer parody modes), the soundtrack for the 2022 sequel diminishes
some of that high style in favor of more contemporary tones. Replacing
Jackman is another animation veteran, Heitor Pereira, whose expertise on
guitar gave some listeners hope for more uniquely robust Latin flair.
Along with Pereira came several original songs, including one co-written
by the composer for performance by lead voice Antonio Banderas and a
cast of wild secondary talent. The style of the "Fearless Hero" song is
frantic and chaotic, leaving little elegance left from Banderas'
accomplished tone elsewhere. That song also has little connection to
Pereira's score for Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which resembles
his Minions and The Smurfs entries in their haphazard
constructs and genre-bending insanity at times.
For franchise enthusiasts and film score collectors, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish could be labelled a failure solely because Pereira, for whatever reason, did not utilize any of Jackman's themes from the prior film. Moreover, he completely drops the Horner elements and only supplies the Morricone influences for select cues involving the new villains. All the high parody Latin pizazz from Jackman's score is completely gone here, with the remaining instrumental connections generic and weak by comparison. The strategic decision to head this direction with the music is among the most disappointing of any movie in 2022, Pereira simply unable to compete favorably on any level with his predecessor in this instance. In the process of losing the authenticity of the Horner emulation, Pereira offers too much of a modern edge to function with the Latin stereotypes, the acoustic guitar, castinets, and other genre contributors joined by contemporary electric bass and guitar. Vocals include those typical to standard fantasy and the Morricone parody technique, though they become highly annoying in their inflection in "Holy Frijoles!" and a few other places. Some purely contemporary comedy cues like "Retrospective," leftovers from tired John Powell equivalents, are insufferably out of place with the half-hearted Latin performances. The instruments sometimes sounds obnoxiously synthetic, perhaps because they are sampled or perhaps because they are simply poorly mixed. There are sound effects applied at times, too, including a cracking whip, but these don't define the score. With the obvious Horner connections gone, the music sounds less like an accomplished parody and more like a generically substandard children's entry. The loss of Jackman's themes is compounded by their replacement with less memorable alternatives that are not expressed with enough clarity to dominantly establish themselves. While Jackman's themes did rely on structures and progressions explored extensively in Horner's Zorro scores, Pereira seemingly doesn't follow any precedent. (Incidentally, the "Star Light-Star Bright" cue does not use the children's nursery rhyme song.) The easily recognizable hero and romance themes from Puss in Boots are replaced with new variants for the same concepts, and the titular character receives something of a "coming of age" identity as well. None of these themes really impacts the score until its final third, however, Pereira instead allowing new secondary ideas to carry much of the load for the majority of the film. While his ideas for the therapy dog character, Perrito, and the villains, the Three Bears Crime Family, are not particularly interesting, they are inserted more regularly and obviously into the score than the more central themes. Pereira's new main character theme sounds like the secondary phrase of a longer call-and-answer theme and doesn't have a meaningful impact until an attractive performance in the middle of "A Close Shave" on strings and woodwinds. It then recurs on acoustic guitar in the middle of "Santa Coloma," as much the same in "A Better Point of View," and becomes heroic for a flash during "Puss and Kitty's Flamenco Dance." This main theme receives mild redemption at 0:58 into "He's Here for Me" but stumbles through "No Magic Required." A little more cohesive is a new romance theme doubling for the magical element, opening "Star Light-Star Bright," hinted in the middle of "Legend of the Wishing Star," and beginning "No Magic Required" under other new thematic material. It starts "Team Friendship" with exuberance but necessarily clarity and is finally expressed in full at the outset of "Make a Wish" before reducing to solo guitar for a soft conclusion. Pereira's substitution for Jackman's hero theme is more of a simplistic motif, a long ascent of chords in anticipation with heavier Latin instrumentation. This hero idea is introduced as a crescendo at the end of "Star Light-Star Bright," persists on solo trumpet in the middle of "You Need to Retire," returns at the height of "Getaway" and late in "Go Ahead, Run For It," and matures at 1:04 into "The Fight With Death," ending that cue again on solo trumpet. There is some measure of potential in these themes, but Pereira never establishes them well enough for them to succeed, and he certainly doesn't mingle them with much intelligence to suggest connections between the protagonists. They are, simply put, limp and uninspiring. Listeners more in tune with the comedic elements of these kinds of scores may appreciate what Pereira attempts with his two secondary themes for the dog and villains in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. The former has a touch of Hawaiian flavor with slide guitar and ukulele to completely distinguish it from the Latin aspects of the lead cats, which is an acceptable strategic decision but not one that benefits the listening experience outside of context. It's heard throughout "Meet Dog" in full and hinted at 0:41 into "Horner Heist," recurring late in "The Enchanted Map" and the second half of "Stop and Smell the Roses." Meanwhile, the new villain theme is so obvious and pervasive that it may be the only thing you recall from the score. Its five-note descending phrases with harmonica and banjo accents open "Track That Cat" and develop further at 0:56 into "The Three Bears Crime Family" on more modern instrumentation, achieving the equivalent silliness to "Jack and Jill" from the prior score. It opens "Legend of the Wishing Star" with sleaze, is littered throughout "Mowing Posies" in exoticism, becomes disjointed in "Cabin in the Woods," and adopts eerie comedic tones during all of "We Are Home." The villain theme opens "Your Favorite Book" on solo female voice, starts "Bear Family Counseling" in solitude, sparsely meanders at the beginning of "A Proper Family," turns slightly dramatic in "All You Care About," and shifts to a hopeful stance in the middle of "Make a Wish" once the characters' transformation is complete. There are a few unique melodic touches in the score, including the nice moment of lament for Latin elements throughout "Eulogy." The album presentation runs extremely long, the score lacking any narrative consistency to sustain that length. Two of the Spanish-language songs at the end, "La Vida es Una" and "Por Que te Vas," make for better listening than either the score or the two variants of Banderas' "Fearless Hero." The album does not include two Harry Gregson-Williams cues from Shrek 2, "Obliged to Help" and "The End/Happily Ever After," that were dropped into the film. On the whole, the score and its album are significant disappointments after the guilty pleasure parodies from Jackman for the prior film. There was no artistic need to totally abandon all the themes from Puss in Boots, and Pereira's minimally effective replacements are largely devoid of the same infectious personality. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 92:40
NOTES & QUOTES:
There exists no official packaging for this album.
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