KUNG FU PANDA

Animated movies are becoming amazingly hit-or-miss. When done well, they are installation art…vibrant, thoughtful, and engaging. When they aren’t…well…let’s just say that it’s fitting that many of them tie into Happy Meals, since they leave you with the same empty-yet-bloated feeling. Unfortunately, the fast food flicks have been having their way lately. That’s why it’s a relief when something like KUNG FU PANDA comes along and hits the sweet spot between fun and foolishness.

KUNG FU PANDA is the story of Po (voice of Jack Black). Po is a Panda who works in his father’s noodle restaurant. While he spends his days as a simple rolly-polly noodler, he dreams of being a kung fu warrior and fighting alongside The Furious Five. A noble ambition, but a lofty one given that he seems to have trouble going up just a few steps without getting winded. Still, fate has a funny way of making things happen for the noble-hearted, and Po finds himself being decreed as a chosen one…”The Dragon Warrior” who is supposed to be a high protector of all China.

But being a Dragon warrior takes more than just a point and a nod, and Po soon finds himself at great lengths to prove himself. His new teacher Shifu (voice of Dustin Hoffman) seems determined to make Po quit. He wants to dismiss Po’s choosing as a mere accident, but he cannot argue with the spiritual notion that there are no accidents. However, Shifu’s pupils form up the aforementioned Furious Five: Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Crane, and Viper (Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, David Cross, Seth Rogen, and Lucy Liu). They are strong, focused, and agile. How can a tubby Panda possibly be one of them? Let alone the greatest of them all?

Making matters worse, is the fact that a great threat is casting a shadow over China. An imprisoned former pupil of Shifu named Tai Lung (Ian McShane) has escaped from captivity. After his daring jailbreak, he starts making his way back to Shifu to enact revenge, and its said that China’s only hope to avoid Tai Lung’s wrath is The Dragon Warrior…every chubby ounce of him.

KUNG FU PANDA is the latest offering from DreamWorks animation studios, the wildly inconsistent brains that have given us titles like SHREK, SHARK TALE, and BEE MOVIE. They’ve managed to get things right with this movie, mostly by keeping the story simple. It’s an underdog story that works surprisingly well, since the underdog is such a misfit. The laughs are there, and it avoids the winks to the grown ups in the audience that often trip up animated features lately.

It seems strange to say about an animated movie, but what makes KUNG FU PANDA so good is its action sequences. Remember the rescue of Princess Fiona in SHREK? Well DreamWorks does too, and they have finally created something that lives up to that amazing bit of CG Animated genius – twice over in the same movie. Bai Lung’s escape from his fortress is the first such scene. It’s well edited, gorgeously rendered, and exciting as can be. then, just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, the animators serve up another set of eye candy when Bai Lung fights The Furious Five on a set of rope bridges.

I do believe that the movie could have done without a celebrity voice or three, but that seems to be Hollywood animation’s bread and butter these days, so such casting choices aren’t likely to change anytime soon. Admittedly, I came into KUNG FU PANDA with low expectations, possibly because I was still crusty from the over-aggressive marketing DreamWorks cooked up. However, I’m happy to say that KUNG FU PANDA is one of DreamWorks better animated offerings, and one of the best movies of the summer so far.

Matineescore: ★ ★ ★ out of ★ ★ ★ ★

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