Kung Fu Panda

Jeri Jacquin, Movie Maven

Opening this Friday from Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks animation is “Kung Fu Panda”.

This is the story of Po (Jack Black) the Panda who lives in the Valley of Peace. He is considered to be the laziest animal in the land that constantly daydreams about becoming a kung-fu master.

On the day that the red panda master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) is to choose the Dragon Master a series of mishaps drops Po into the master’s lap. Shifu has no choice but to train Po but believes the honor should have gone to one of the Fighting Five, students who Shifu had trained himself.

Tai Lung (Ian McShane) will put them all to the tests as this lethal tiger escapes from his twenty year imprisonment looking for revenge against everyone who kept him from becoming the Dragon Master.

Po must reach deep inside himself to find that looks can be deceiving when the dreams of the heart are strong. Doing what he must to save his village against Lung, Po also saves those who didn’t truly believe in him.

FINAL WORD: Black as the voice of Po is his usual very funny self. He seems comfortable as the awkward panda. Hoffman as master Shifu seems to have his voice set on getting rid of Po but, in the end, knows he made the right choice even if for the wrong reasons.

The Fighting Five have very small parts with Angelina Jolie as The Tigress, Jackie Chan as Monkey, Seth Rogan as Mantis, Lucy Liu as Viper and David Cross as Crane. There was such potential for these characters to be bigger and for the laughs to be more.

There are also roles by James Hong as Mr. Ping, Po’s goose-father and Michael Clark-Duncan as Commander Vachir.

DreamsWorks had to go through a bit of Kung Fu training itself to bring the action martial arts moves to animation. Having martial arts actor Jackie Chan give his opinion of the fight scenes exclaims, “I was amazed when I saw the film. They did all the acrobatics and fighting well. Maybe they copied it from me!”

TUBS OF POPCORN: I give “Kung Fu Panda” three tubs of popcorn out of five. This is most definitely a family film geared toward the same themes of believing in oneself that DreamWorks is becoming famous for. There is a lot of adult humor and references to martial arts movies that children might not understand, but nothing to stop them from having a great time.

All in all a good fun movie and, as Po would say, “prepare for awesomeness!”