Kung Fu Panda (US. 2008)

Directors: Mark Osborne and John Stevenson

The idea that animated films have to please the lowest common denominator is a blatant miss-conception. It’s a label that isn’t helped one bit by pieces of pop culture filled vomit like Madagascar and Shrek clogging our collective conciousness. People automatically assume that because REAL people don’t adorn the screen that the film MUST be for the kiddies. It’s a rare occurrence that we get a good animated film in North America from a major studio OTHER then the always winning Pixar (Toy Story, The Incredibles) that isn’t filled with explosive diarrhoea and reference to the newest pop single.

“Kung Fu Panda” is the exception to the rule.

Po (Jack Black) works at his father’s (James Wong) noodle stand by day and dreams of being a kung-fu fighter by night. His dreams of joining the awesome martial arts experts “The Furious Five” will never be a reality because he’s a fat lazy Panda! It’s only when he gets ‘accidentally’ picked as the “Dragon Warrior’ the impossible becomes reality. The overweight panda now has to train under a jaded master (Dustin Hoffman) to take on the seemingly invincible recently escaped tiger warrior (Ian Mchsane)

Kung-Fu Panda succeeds where others fail becomes it’s is aware of the roots of it’s subject matter. It’s not a parody of chop-socky action but is instead a love letter homage to all those Shaw Brothers movies of old. The idea of adapting all the styles of combat (Crane, Mantis, Monkey, Tiger) to their real animal counterparts was a brilliant move that is breathless on screen. The action scenes here are REAL action scenes. Characters weave, duck and defy gravity in ways that could only be achieved through the tireless work of a few people moving pixels around. There’s no fart jokes or sly winking at the audience to completely take the thrills out of the set pieces. KFP takes the subject matter and characters seriously in the context of the story that’s being presented. Sure, there’s lots of people falling down and crashing into things but it never hurts the story (simple as it is) that’s presented. It may pull at the heart strings a LITTLE too much but it never grates because you have to give it credit for these melodramatic beats being organic to the rest of the universe.

Jack Black plays himself as the talky joke-ee buffoon and he does that pretty well. Dustin Hoffman brings way more emotional depth to his sifu character that is necessary. The ‘all star’ voice cast (Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, Angelina Jolie, David Cross [!]) on the Furious Five are just there, not a jaw dropping job, but interesting tell your friends trivia. Jackie Chan as Monkey has maybe three incomprehensible lines and is only there for geek currency.

On the IMAX screen Kung Fu Panda pops off-screen. It’s Chinese inspired design and direction is jaw-dropping but that doesn’t make it a good movie. The fact that it works is the real seller. I recommend KFP whole heartedly as a light action packed tale for the WHOLE FAMILY!

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I expect my cheque for the quote in a week.