Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Blogorium Review: Kung Fu Panda

The Wu Tang and the Shaolin and... The Panda?

The Cap'n presents a quick review of a kids movie you may have forgotten about: Kung Fu Panda.

I was actually going to wait until I'd had a chance to watch Wall*E to put this review up, but since Amazon went with UPS instead of the US Postal Service, I'm shit out of luck re: watching it tonight. I should've known when I read the erratic (read: retarded) shipping pattern for my package. UPS assholes always require a signature when they arrive even if you don't want them to and their general MO is to ring the doorbell and then just leave.

Of course I was in class so I have no idea. Yet another reason why I'll a) think twice before pre-ordering on Amazon and b) never work at UPS again.

Anyway, on to Kung Fu Panda, which suddenly makes Wall*E's inevitable march towards the Oscars not so inevitable. Again, I haven't seen Wall*E, but let me say that Kung Fu Panda does something that Shrek never made me want to do, let alone any of Dreamworks Animation's other films: watch it again.

In fact, I'll probably watch Kung Fu Panda several more times in the future, because it's that good in its own right. Instead of the normal Dreamworks fare which focuses on pop culture references that instantly date the movie, Panda exists to be a gateway drug for children into the world of chop socky.

My hope is that as children grow with Kung Fu Panda, they begin following the films of Jackie Chan; first the stupid, childish ones, but then the real stuff, like Drunken Master 2. From there, they'll be ready for Enter the Dragon, Street Fighter, and anything the Shaw Brothers Studios have to offer.

Kung Fu Panda makes the martial arts fun for kids in a way that still respects the source material. Yes, there are references to other kung fu movies, but it's nice that when they selected a Mantis, a Monkey, a Crane, a Viper, and a Tiger as the "Furious Five", each creature fights that respective style. Seriously. Pull out your "Shaolin vs Wu Tang" dvds and check it out. Master Oogway, a tortoise uses a tai-ji style, and Po (the Panda in the title) fights bear style.

What's nuts is that the fight sequences are actually really good, and often not designed to be vehicles for cheap jokes. Kung Fu Panda is a kung fu film that happens to be a kids movie. The message, which isn't laid on as thick as I'd expected, is to "follow your dreams".

The story is pretty simple, per kid rules: Po (Jack Black), a panda, dreams of being more than a noodle cook, and when he's accidentally named the "Dragon Warrior", Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) has to train him very quickly in order to stop escaped villain Tai Lung (Ian McShane). There are the usual "fish out of water" shenanigans, but underlying the affair is a deep respect for the martial arts and Chinese wisdom, something lacking in the average "CG Kids Film".

My hope is that people see past the advertising, which plays up the Jack Black and the cheap jokes (of which you see almost all in the trailer) and sit the tykes down over the holiday season for it. Once I've watched Wall*E, I'll be able to put them side by side (since they'll likely be the Oscar contenders this year) and weigh the relative merits, but for now I'm quite pleasantly surprised to say Pixar suddenly has viable competition this year.

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