Puss in Boots kind of surprised me. Far more witty then I expected it to be, nicely animated and featuring a charming story of forgiveness and redemption that belies its Shrek inspired fractured fairy tale roots, this movie more than won me over.

What kids will get from it is plenty of fairly outrageous but not often witty fun with fairytale elements blended into a kind of latterday spaghetti western. For the rest of us, there is plenty of nice visual detail.

It's all amiable stuff, with a perfectly decent script, and the feline hero lapping his milk gets an indulgent laugh.

The laughs are mostly derived from situational comedy, making it more universal than Shrek's pop-culture-heavy referential skits.