"Puss in Boots" review: Top-notch animation, third-rate

** (out of four)

How dare they delay the highly anticipated fifth “Shrek” movie!

If the spinoff “Puss in Boots” has anything going for it (besides avoiding pop culture references), it’s that its mother franchise sunk to such half-assed depths with “Shrek Forever After” that “Puss” feels fresh simply by starting its own chapter. And that’s about where the freshness ends. Does anyone ever feel like the majority of kids’ movies just predictably revisit the same story blueprints as an excuse for youngsters to look at pretty pictures? This is “Kung Fu Panda” syndrome all over again, people.

In the busy, rarely clever “Puss,” the titular cat outlaw (voiced by Antonio Banderas) teams up with his ex-best friend Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) and a fetching new feline (Salma Hayek) to steal golden eggs (and their goose creator) from a castle in the sky. No complaints about the voices or the animation; 3D actually counts for something in “Puss in Boots,” and a few fantasy sequences really pop.

The opposite goes for the story. When you rewrite fairy tales and their familiar faces, the names of the characters barely matter. Do fans of the classic Jack and Jill story get a kick out of seeing them repurposed (and voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris) as evil, murderous thieves? Doubtful.

“Puss in Boots” labors to create an alternate history from childhood treasures; I’ll keep mine the way I remember them, thanks.

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