Review: Kung Fu Panda by Matthew Watkins on June 14th, 2008
Rarely do I leave a theater as satisfied and smiling as I did yesterday after seeing DreamWorks' latest animated venture, Kung-Fu Panda. While not as rich or mature of a film as last year's Ratatouille, Kung-Fu Panda is a great ride, and easily one of the best movies of the season. Never too serious, but not too silly to be without the occasional emotional moment, Kung- Fu Panda offers up a big scoop of seriously funny animated pleasure.
Kung-Fu Panda tells the story of Po the Panda (Jack Black), who has dreams of becoming a great kung-fu master, but is stuck working in his family's restaurant. When he is accidentally chosen as the legendary dragon warrior by the aging Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), he must learn to use his talents, with the guidance of the ever-dubious Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), to fight the evil Tai Lung (Ian McShane). Other notable voice talents include Lucy Lui, Angelina Jolie, David Cross, and Jackie Chan.
Kung-Fu Panda delivers on almost every level. Tons of sight gags and snippets of sharp dialogue permeate the entire film, making sure that every moment has a laugh, even including the more dramatic ones. Sure, the film makes use of a lot of the usual family film conventions (the coming of age story, the “be yourself” and “reach for your dreams” themes), but Panda uses them better than most. By combining these conventions with a story set in mostly unchartered territory (there are few animated family kung-fu films) and solid character drama and comedy, DreamWorks creates something worthy of success, and your time.
The animation looks good as well, and is definitely on par with gorgeous Ratatouille. Every hair is distinguishable, and every noodle in Po's family's secret ingredient soup can be seen individually. The opening sequence, however, might be the most memorable, simply for it's successful attempts to turn the impression of ancient Daoist and Buddhist art into a great pseudo-cell-shaded action sequence. Still, the rest of the film is really clean, detailed, and fun to watch, purely for the look of it.
One excellent aspect of the film that stood out was the facial expressions of the characters. They were used to power jokes and enhance the drama in almost every scene. Rarely have facial expressions been so important to an animated film. The successful use of them in Kung-Fu Panda is wonderful, indicating further that this medium will only continue to grow and become more refined.
Kung-Fu Panda is a good film, and a great cinematic experience that is certainly more than something to hold viewers over until the release of Pixar's Wall-E in two weeks. In fact, Panda shows that DreamWorks is capable of at least challenging Pixar, even if Pixar will always set the standard. Get out there this weekend and keep Kung-Fu Panda in the top five, it's already one of my candidates for best theater trip of the summer.
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