Movie Review. Kung-Fu Panda

Reader Comments

1. Kurt Halfyard 06/08/2008 @ 8:05am

   Boo. Hiss. Dreamworks Animation is officially the worst, most pandering (panda-ing?) animated studio out there. This movie looks to be a celebration of ‘laziness’ on all levels. Animation, story, even main character. I though Madagascar was total ass, and I’ve not bothered with Shrek3.

   Sheesh, if BlueSky studios can put out something as graduate from their equally lazy Ice Age franchice to quality pictures like Horton Hears a Who, then Dreamworks should be capable of more than this Saturday-afternoon special.

   Wall-E can’t come soon enough.

2. Rhythm-X 06/08/2008 @ 11:26am

   KUNG FU FIGHTING on the soundtrack = no sale.  The hell with Rain’s version, that song never needs to be heard again, period, in any version.  If, as a filmmaker, you’re so lazy and utterly devoid of ideas that you’d actually stoop to using it, screw your movie.

3. Rhythm-X 06/08/2008 @ 11:34am

   Hold on, Kurt - HORTON HEARS A WHO, a quality picture?  Seriously?  That looked like more of the same old same old to me - radio with colorful pictures.

4. Kurt Halfyard 06/08/2008 @ 1:15pm

   Nope, Horton has a lot to say, and is really the first BLUE SKY animation picture worth having a look at.  Lots in there for adults, lots in there for children, and the first modern film to really do justice to a Geisel story.  There are some inspired images here, and this one approaches the pixar level (except for Cars, which is pretty bad) of nicely and smoothly integrating themes into the story that gets kids to ‘stretch’ rather than simply be entertained with colorful-fast-moving-images and thus the lowest-common-denominator. 

   Horton was an absolute surprise to me (expected bad found, well, if not ‘greatness’, than ‘pretty-darn-goodnes’..

5. Geert Jan 06/08/2008 @ 3:04pm

   I feel our tastes normally match pretty well Kurt, but I have to agree with Rhythm-X on this one. I really don’t understand the praise Horton Hears A Who gets. It tries to be more than your typical worn out Dreamworks animated movie, but failed to do so and turned out to be just boring and a bit aimless. I kind of get the feeling it’s just popular with Americans, who are known to be crazy about anything Dr. Seuss, but I could be wrong there. Cars is just much more enjoyable to me. Not Pixar’s strongest, and they’re laying the moral of the story on a bit thick, but overall a well made film that looks stellar and has a great performance from Paul Newman.

   As for Kung Fu Panda, I think it looks fun, a bit more fun than the other Dreamworks films, but still my expectations aren’t too high. I think we can all agree that the real animated treat of this year will be Wall-E.

6. Kurt Halfyard 06/08/2008 @ 3:28pm

   Geert.  I’m Canadian.  I guess it’s a big difference to those on this continent.  But moving along, the ‘mayor-spends-only-minutes-with-each-child’ sight-gag was inspired.  The ‘take a stand’ element to the movie (mirrored in the macro and micro world was better done than any childrens film (lately anyway) and the Kangaroo fear-monger is a uniquely American “Soccer MOm” phenomenon.  Yes, this boldly speaks to American, in the same way that THE INCREDIBLES did with the phrase, “if everyone is ‘special’ than nobody is” - The US ‘culture-war’ has a very distinct ‘suburban’ wearing down of celebrating quality/talent in the fear of upsetting ‘self-esteem’ and Horton taps into this nicely.

7. Geert Jan 06/08/2008 @ 4:35pm

   Oh yeah I know, the American remark was more an explanation I came up with as to why this movie seems to be so praised on the internet, while people over here seem less enthusiastic. I also didn’t mean to say that Americans would like the message of the film more, just that maybe they’d enjoy it more because they can see one of their beloved Dr. Seuss books come to life. But then again, they weren’t that enthusiastic about those earlier Dr. Seuss movies, so I don’t know.

   Anyway, you make some valid points, but I just didn’t like it. Maybe they took the “take a stand” message just a bit too far for me, as in that it felt as if they were trying to say it’s alright to take a stand against reason and believe in a higher power. Or maybe it was just because to make the film feature-length they had to pad it with lame pop-culture references and other nonsense. I mean, how much did the mayor had to go through before people finally started to believe him? He had proof all along, but they just stretched it.

8. ChevalierAguila 06/08/2008 @ 4:59pm

   Not only all these computer animated flicks bore the hell out of me, i’m not paying to see another stereotype-fest of asian culture.

9. Kurt Halfyard 06/08/2008 @ 10:04pm

   Chevalier - Amen to that!

10. swampthing 06/08/2008 @ 11:17pm

    Kurt: Have you watched the movie?

11. swampthing 06/08/2008 @ 11:21pm

    Am an Asian and I didn’t think there was much stereotyping. Good homage to asian martial art films.

    Maybe you guys really need to watch a film before criticising.

    Also I think the main reviewer gives too much away. *shrug*

12. Todd Brown 06/09/2008 @ 2:24am

    Kurt:  I took the boy to see this yesterday and we both absolutely loved it.  I’d see it’s the best thing Dreamworks has ever done by a pretty comfortable margin.

13. Jixy 06/09/2008 @ 7:25am

    I also grew up watching Kung Fu movies.  I absolutely loved this animation.  I laughed as much as any comedy I have watched in the last several years.  My god-child loved it as well.  Highly recommended.

    CC

14. Iscariot 06/09/2008 @ 10:51am

    I would agree that it’s the best thing Dreamworks animation has done, without question.  The impression I get from the altered Dreamworks logo, to the amazing opening, and through the film proper is that the animators had a lot of fun with the characters and material as a whole, and it shows.

    In terms of stereo-typing Asian culture, I’m not really sure how that would very applicable in this case.  The movie steers fairly clear of strong cultural tones (unlike say “Forbidden Kingdom” with it’s bastardized “Journey To the West") and comes off as a very loving homage to kung-fu cinema.  The only thing that struck me as somewhat questionable was that Shifu (who is a red panda aka firefox, not a muskrat) is clearly an alteration of the word Sifu, or master in martial arts usage.  I’m not sure why they even bothered to add the “h”.

    The song “Kung Fu Fighting” on the end credits, and for those that might care I don’t recall any songs during the actual film.

15. The Visitor 06/09/2008 @ 11:03pm

    “Shifu” is the Mandarin term for master, while “Sifu” is the Cantonese version.

    btw, Pandas eat leaves. the movie stretches that fact a little bit much.

16. Iscariot 06/10/2008 @ 1:34pm

    Ah, good to know.

17. joash 06/17/2008 @ 1:43am

    WOW !! Thats all i cud say about this movie wonderfully scripted....executed and animated...wonderfull voice actions....gr8 comedy,,ill give ita flawless victory but for one or two points....1)--> The movie shd have agiven itselda stronger ending...withthe eleavtionthat it created in the whole movie...well i think that wa the actual peculiarity of the movie.....
    2)-->wonderfull direciona and aniamrion good voices of angelina joe lee lucy liu...gr8 worki thumbs uppp to the cast and crew of KUNG FU PANDA

18. MisterKIKI 07/08/2008 @ 5:15am

    I’m sure I can be accused of giving this film a snub when I first heard about it, but I’m glad I gave it a chance and was proven wrong! Plenty of homages to anime and kung-fu movies to keep the geeks happy. Oogway, Po and Shifu were really interesting and thought out characters. Beautiful artwork, epic sweeping music. Wonderful mix of comedy and some drama <SPOILER - had the ending led to a certain characters death, it would have been almost perfect dramatic ending - SPOILER END>. 

    Actione scenes were well choreographed and lengthy. The training scenes reminded me of how I used to enjoy Jackie Chan movies (Even some of his older movies had more stereotypes than good taste should allow)

    Best summary I heard on the radio: “It has fun -with- the kung-fu genre, without making fun -of- it!”

    Spot on!

    Dreamworks: Don’t make the inevitable CGI sequel, please? Comission a 2D “Awesome Six” spin off like the dream sequence. I’d pay money for that.

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