‘Kung-Fu Panda’ Fun For All Ages
DreamWorks released their animated family film – “Kung-Fu panda” – over the weekend and the children as well as the adults love every minute of it. The movie is full of humor that helps to bring in not only young children – but also adults and to keep them laughing the whole way through.
The stroke of genius is, of course, the film’s hero — the big, lovable bear that is the Chinese panda. Sweet looking, perhaps a bit clumsy, seemingly unflappable, what could be an odder hero for a kung fu movie? Transforming a panda named Po — voiced by big, lovable Jack Black — into a kung fu fighter to save a threatened village in ancient times is essentially the entire movie.
He does not start with a lot of promise, only a boundless enthusiasm for the discipline and a seeming inability to perform its simplest tasks. His dad, a goose named Mr. Ping (James Hong) — that discrepancy is never clarified — runs a noodle shop and expects his son to follow in his web steps.
But Po longs to train under Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and alongside his heroes, the Furious Five: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Viper (Lucy Liu), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Crane (David Cross) and Monkey (is that Jackie Chan). He miraculously fulfills this impossible dream when the inventor of kung fu, Oogway the turtle (Randall Duk Kim), anoints him the long-prophesied Dragon Warrior.
A bun or a cookie snatched from his grasp has Po performing feats of remarkable agility and no little ferocity. He is soon ready to face the villainous Tai Lung (Ian McShane), a snow leopard who descends on the fearful village to exact revenge his own rejection as the Dragon Warrior.
Like most chop-socky movies, “KF Panda” strays not at all from its twin goals of action and comedy. Whatever points the script by Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger want to make to children about pursuing goals, it does so quickly and gets back to the fights. A battle along a rope bridge between the Furious Five and Tai Lung and Po’s showdown with his adversary dominate the final third of the film after the mostly comic run-up to those battles.