Kung Fu Panda

Rating

Director

Mark Osborne, John Stevenson

Screenplay

Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger, Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris

Length

92 min.

Starring

Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Ian McShane, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Randall Duk Kim, James Hong, Dan Fogler, Michael Clarke Duncan, Wayne Knight

MPAA Rating

PG for sequences of martial arts action.

Review

There’s Pixar, then there’s DreamWorks, and then there’s everyone else. While not the powerhouse producer of animated classics that Pixar has been, DreamWorks can still churn out some interesting, if not as high quality, films.

Kung Fu Panda follows the adventures of a portly panda named Po (Jack Black) as he attempts to find his destiny as the legendary Dragon Warrior. Eschewing the traditional storytelling techniques and cinematic flourishes of Chinese martial arts pictures, Panda is surprisingly faithful to the milieu.

While most of the film is done in a traditional style of computer animation, the opening sequence is a more inventive and eclectic style, though thankfully it only plays for a few minutes, for it could have been irritating in higher quantities. Po, the unlikely child of a duck (James Hong), longs to escape his “destiny” as a great chef. When the opportunity arises to meet his heroes the Furious Five (he possesses an action figure of each in his bedroom), he attempts to skip his familial duties and attend the naming of the Dragon Warrior. His father has other things in mind and forces him to take a soup cart to the palace, which sits atop a tremendous number of stone steps.

After trying to get into the already-closed courtyard, Po ends up face-first on the floor of the courtyard with the enigmatic ancient turtle Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) pointing down at him suggesting that he, and not Tigress (Angelina Jolie) is the new Dragon Warrior. It is this “decision” that almost immediately alienates the Five against him and forces the man who taught the Five to try and teach an inept panda how to become a true kung fu master.

Aside from Black and Jolie, the film features a number of well-known actors lending their voices to the various protagonists and antagonists of the film. Leaving behind his live action credentials, Dustin Hoffman gives a strong vocal performance as Shifu, the kung fu master trainer who must battle his personal demons of letting down the man who might one day have become the Dragon Warrior had he not succumbed to vanity, pride and greed. That student, Tai Lung (Ian McShane), is the core threat of the film, escaping from prison after years of exile in order to assume his perceived rightful place as the Dragon Warrior.

Jackie Chan is barely noticeable as Monkey, Seth Rogen is deceptively masked as the voice of Mantis, Lucy Liu hisses admirably as Viper and David Cross drops his normal self mockery to play the more suitably vain Crane. Black is good, though a bit over the top and Jolie is barely recognizable audibly as Tigress.

The story of seeking inner peace and finding the Dragon Warrior in all of us is a bit hackneyed when looked at as a separate entity from the movie, but somehow the directors (Mark Osborne, John Stevenson) and writers (Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger, Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris) manage to pull it off.

The difference of course is the studios. Pixar tries to find unique and interesting ways to reveal answers to traditional moral dilemmas and to develop resolutions to character flaws. DreamWorks tends to go the more populist, but obvious route. For them, it works. It’s one of the few reasons why DreamWorks is the second best American animation house trailing Pixar by a wide margin.

Enjoyable without feeling too heavy, Kung Fu Panda is a welcome remedy to the dark and oblique views of humanity that have been portrayed by recent live action efforts, even if that relief doesn’t live terribly long after the final credits roll.

Review Written

August 18, 2008