STUDIO: DreamWorks
RELEASE DATE: June 6, 2008
STARRING: Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, David Cross, Seth Rogen, and Ian McShane
WRITTEN BY: Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger
DIRECTED BY: Mark Osborne & John Stevenson
GENRE: Animated
RATING: PG

Aren't Jackie Chan and Jet Li animated enough? With movies like House of Flying Daggers and Kung Fu Hustle not exactly playing within the standard boundaries of reality and physics, do we actually need a cartoon version of kicking and punching mayhem? Perhaps that's the heart of the reason why Kung Fu Panda, the latest animated extravaganza from DreamWorks, feels somewhat perfunctory. Who needs a portly panda and a tiger that sounds like Swearengen from Deadwood when you have Stephen Chow and Bruce Lee? Admittedly, more people will probably see Kung Fu Panda on its first day than saw Kung Fu Hustle in its entire run, so perhaps expectations are a little different for non-martial arts fans. On that level, for families unfamiliar with "wire fu", Panda could easily be a fun summer diversion, just creative enough in its concept to earn a marginal recommendation, but a film that will be a distant memory by the time Wall-E takes over your world in three weeks.

Jack Black voices the title character, Po, a panda who likes to turn to comfort food when life in his dad's noodle shop gets too boring for him. The rotund dreamer longs to be a notorious martial arts master, like his heroes, the "Furious Five" - Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Viper (Lucy Liu), Crane (David Cross), and Mantis (Seth Rogen). That group of oddly cast characters is led by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and the wise turtle Oogway, who, one day, has a vision of his former-student-gone-bad, Tai Lung (Ian McShane), escaping his confinement at a legendary prison. Oogway and Shifu decide that it's finally time to crown the "Dragon Warrior", a fighter who will be allowed to read the mythical "Dragon Scroll" and become the ultimate kung fu champion. Po, the Furious Five's number one fanboy, struggles to even get up the hundreds of stairs to be a spectator for the Dragon Scroll ceremony, but he soon finds himself at the end of Oogway's finger when it's time to point out who will save the small community from the evil Tai Lung. Master Shifu is frustrated. Tigress thinks it should have been her. Monkey just wants his peace. And Mantis is Seth Rogen. Yes, THAT Seth Rogen, perhaps the last person you think of when you hear "kung fu".

But that's the general idea behind Kung Fu Panda (and it's actually kind of refreshing to hear unconventional voice work from people like Rogen and David Cross) - anyone can be a kung fu master, even an overweight panda. As you might imagine, the fight choreography in Kung Fu Panda is the real draw. And, especially in IMAX, the film is never visually boring - a problem that has seeped into the CGI animation genre in dull films like Ant Bully and Hoodwinked. So, cool fights and pretty pictures? That's all there is, right? If that's all you're looking for, you won't be disappointed by Kung Fu Panda, but the ingenuity on display in the best CGI movies just isn't here. It's a lateral move from Surf's Up, a movie that opened on the same weekend last year and provoked the same "yeah, it's okay" response. If we've learned anything over the last few years, it's that CGI animation, which once could inspire anyone's imagination, has gone through a "settling." We can't hold every CGI film up to Pixar or even Shrek. They'll come up short. With that caveat in mind, Kung Fu Panda works. It never does anything particularly wrong, but the writers and directors don't take enough chances or do anything that wasn't already a part of the martial arts genre to really bring the film to chopsocky life.