Movie review - Kung Fu Panda

Po the Panda (voice of Jack Black) is the lazy son of the noodle maker (who is a goose. Hmmm....) but he secretly dreams of becoming an AWESOME kung fu master. One day, Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) is told by Master Oogway the Turtle of his premonition that Tai Lung the Snow Leopard, Shifu's nemesis, will break out of prison. As such, Oogway will pick the Dragon Warrior from one of the five of the local kung fu champs trained by Shifu: Tiger , Crane, Monkey, Snake or Mantis. So imagine everyone's surprise and dismay when Oogway picks Panda! Eventually Shifu manages to overcome his prejudices against Po and trains him to be the ultimate Dragon Warrior!

You know, I LOVE it when a movie proves me wrong. And when I first heard about this movie, I thought it was going to be a shocker. But then I saw the promos and thought, oh maybe it won't be so bad. And then I saw the US reviews and thought *hmm, maybe I'll go see this*. And once I saw it, I thought *I love this movie!!!* Here's why.

First of all, it's fun. This is a straight forward, not particularly groundbreaking story about a Panda's ascent to kung fu mastery, but it's a very funny straight forward story of a Panda's ascent to mastery! The jokes are as simple as Tiger accusing Po of not taking is position seriously, followed by him pulling a stupid face, followed by him falling down and we see him completely covered in acupuncture needles - excellent visual jokes here. In addition, a lot of CGI movies are aimed at the dual adult and child markets. This often means that the script and animation are loaded with pop culture references. While that's not often a bad thing, it can lead to overload or acts as a mask to hide a poor story *cough Shrek3 cough cough*. there are plenty of references that movie buffs should pick out; I managed to find The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Jackie Chan movies (he's the voice of Monkey), and Ninja Scroll amongst others. Essentially, this movie is not overloaded with things to disrupt or distract from the plot and quite frankly, that's a good thing.

The Ninja Scroll ref comes at the beginning of the film when you see the lone panda in his conical hat emerging from the mist which is done in 2D style which brings me to animation. While I was not as hypnotised by the visuals as I was in Horton, it is downright beautiful. The China we get is the classic China seen in Song Dynasty scroll painting.
Very pretty. And the rendering of the characters! Po is so round and cuddly. The animation is also very good at replicating (what looks to me like) real kung fu moves! There's a kung fu fight between Po and Shifu over some char siu baos/xiao long b that reminded me a lot of my youth that looked very authentic. I was very pleased to see that the film actually had fight choreographers. Nice!

Anyway, I really do believe that there is something in this movie that would please everyone. Even for the most cynical people out there, it only goes for 92 minutes so if you hate it, it'll end soon. Go watch!
(Pictures from rottentomatoes.com)
8-8.5/10