Puss in Boots (1988)

Puss in Boots (Eugene Marner, 1988)
Walken plays: Puss - boot enthusiast, royal sleight-of-hand-er, happy cat

Synopsis: Did this movie even happen? Or was it a delirious, hallucinogenic fever dream? It's hard to tell the difference sometimes. Puss in Boots, part of the Canon series of straight-to-VHS live action fairy tales, is sweetness personified. Still, it's so abrasively shoddy and weird that, watching it, it's easy to worry that you're lapsing out of consciousness and sobriety, much like the superimposed shapeshifting ogre and cat who flicker in front of our eyes like oh so many acid flashbacks. The story - the age-old children's lark about a talking cat who, upon being gifted a pair of boots, helps elevate his master's social status from country worker to faux-royalty - is so stiff that it recalls a Coen Brothers parody, with the cheap looking costumes, atrocious cast, and weak musical numbers doing it no favours. 




To say that Walken's Puss makes the movie is the understatement of his career. His flamboyant, gallant charisma, jaunty walk, and flawless song and dance skills bring effervescent life to literature's most famous trickster cat, while his uniquely syncopated delivery makes every line he speaks garrulously hilarious (whether it's always intentional is up for discussion). Even his springy, fidgety physicality uncannily embodies feline twitchiness. Cheerily oblivious to the disaster he's surrounded by, he's clearly having such a ball that it's hard not to share in his fun, and it's solely because of him that the film deserves even a whisper of recognition henceforth. 

Wacky Walken dialogue: Walken isn't given many wacky lines here - the goofiness is all in his performance juxtaposed with the awful backdrop. It's kind of adorable when he falls over, upon trying to walk as a human(?) for the first time, and sheepishly declares, "Two feet - they're not as easy as I thought they'd be, Master," and "Nobody does court DANCING anymore! Don't TELL me you don't know any country dances!" is made hysterical from his delivery alone, but, quite honestly, just hearing him bray out "Give me some BOOTS!" is probably the film's biggest laugh. 

DOES HE DANCE: Oh goodness, does he. Chances are, if you've seen any 'Christopher Walken dances!' compilation, at least a third of it is taken from his glorious, table vaulting moves as he breaks it down here. If Puss in Boots has any legacy, it's giving Walken an excuse to cut the rug in his prime. But why waste time with mere words: here are some of his grooviest moves here, in glorious gif form.

Overall Walken-o-meter: 10/10 cowbells. These boots were made for Walken. Everything about his work here is pristinely, loveably batshit: his titanic charm as he acts his way out of the atrocious film he's ensconced in, his wholehearted commitment to the physicality of a cat (that's a wonderful sentence I never assumed I'd write), his out-of-this-world singing and dancing, and the fact that such a surreal acid trip of a film elevates rather than blemishes his career status. Meow.