January 24, 2009: Kung Fu Panda
There are typically three animated movies nominated each year for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. If a Pixar movie has come out that year, it is always nominated and usually wins. Dreamworks has been slowly clawing its way towards credibility in the animated market for a decade now, with reasonable financial rewards but spotty awards success (to which Jack Black more than alluded in his Oscar presentation banter this year), and a Dreamworks entry usually fills the second slot. Finally, there’s usually one random choice thrown in there, which sometimes turns out to be a hidden gem and sometimes turns out to be a total dud. Kung Fu Panda is the Dreamworks entry this year.
This was better than I expected. Jack Black brings a manic energy to the screen in person, enough to save just about any movie he’s ever been in except for Nacho Libre. Animated, he can be just as good, as he is here. This is the story of a portly panda bear (Po) working in the family noodle stand somewhere in China. We suspect he is adopted since his father is a small scrawny bird. He loves kung fu even though he’s large and uncoordinated, and through an apparent mistake, he is chosen by the local wise master as the “Dragon Warrior”, the one designated to fight a bad guy who is returning for revenge after escaping from a ridiculously high-security prison.
Having been chosen over the five famous kung fu masters who reasonably expected that one of them would in fact be crowned as the Dragon Warrior, Po now needs to be trained in a big hurry in order to be ready to face his enemy. Does he eventually find himself, and train to become a respected master, and defeat the villain using his unconventional techniques? I won’t spoil it for the reader who has not yet seen the film.
The supporting performances are odd or underplayed here, which is surprising, since these animated films usually like to make a big point of the big names they score. Dustin Hoffman plays one of the masters who is training Po, and while recognizable, he somehow doesn’t really bring the right tone to the character. Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan and David Cross are utterly wasted as the other kung fu masters who are resentful of Po’s being declared the Dragon Warrior. There’s great potential here, but they have very little screen time and very little to do in the scenes they have.
This is a fun movie, nothing too special but fun for the kids and the adults. Dreamworks is pretty good at the genre and while not a master like Pixar, it’s certainly more consistent than the “random choice” Best Animated Feature nominee I’m faced with each year. The bad taste of Brother Bear is still in my mouth (or is that my brain?) five years later.
Animated time-waster, fun for all.
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