STUDIO: DreamWorks
RELEASE DATE: November 9, 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
FEATURES: Blu-Ray Exclusive - The Animators Corner: Storyboards & Interviews
Blu-Ray Exclusive - Trivia Track
Blu-Ray Exclusive - BD-Live Fun Features
Dragon Warrior Training Academy
What Fighting Style Are You?
Learn to Draw Po (HD)
Help Save Wild Pandas (HD)
"Kung Fu Fighting" Music Video (HD)
Inside the Chinese Zodiac (HD)
Do You Kung Fu? (HD)
Food Network Exclusive: Alton Brown at Mr. Ping's Noodle House

To this critic and box office watcher, Kung Fu Panda was the most surprising hit of the year. No one should have ANY doubt any more that DreamWorks Animation is playing in the same big league as Pixar. I don't think that DreamWorks has yet to approach the quality bar of Pixar, but they have found a formula that works and a style of their own. The slightly more manic and visually hyper style of DreamWorks Animation led to not only the $60 million plus opening of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa this past weekend but turned Kung Fu Panda into an INSANELY big hit. How big? Kung Fu Panda has made $631 million worldwide with over $200 million domestic. It is in the top 40 ALL-TIME in worldwide gross right behind The Attack of the Clones and The Incredibles. This is not one of the biggest movies of 2008. It's one of the biggest movies of all time. And it's been treated as such by DreamWorks Entertainment's Blu-Ray division, taking a good movie and turning into a great home release. There's something for every member of the family in the Blu-Ray release of Kung Fu Panda, a nearly perfect display of spectacular video and audio combined with a dazzling array of special features. The film was one of the biggest surprises at the box office. It will undoubtedly be one of the best-selling Blu-Rays of the season. I won't be surprised this time.

What about the movie itself? The heart of Kung Fu Panda is in the right place and there are visual elements - the anime inspiration, the over-saturated colors - that I adore, but there's something about the screenplay that doesn't quite click for me. 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 but I wonder if Jackie Chan and Jet Li aren't already animated enough without the benefit of CGI. Movies like House of Flying Daggers and Kung Fu Hustle are practically cartoons already and Kung Fu Panda gets the visuals right but kind of loses the story. We've seen this before. Watching the landmark fights in the film is worth seeing on Blu-Ray, but I wish the screenplay had more resonance. It's not that Kung Fu Panda ever 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.

In this critic's eyes, DreamWorks Animation may not yet match the quality level of Pixar when it comes to the films themselves, but the Blu-Ray release of Kung Fu Panda is as spectacular as any animated title released this year. It's a beauty. The colors are well-defined and incredibly vibrant. Kids will probably be happy to watch Kung Fu Panda on any platform but their parents will appreciate it significantly more in high definition. The best quality of the film is in the colorful eye of its creators. Watch it on Blu-Ray.

As for special features, where do you start? The parents and older fans will love the "Animator's Corner: Storyboards and Interviews", which is, well, pretty self-explanatory. You can watch the directors do their commentary on the film (which is also available as purely an audio track) and see the occasional interview with the cast as it pertains to what you're watching in the film. Storyboard and early test scenes will also pop up picture-in-picture. Love it. There's also a trivia track that offers a lot more actual information than these things usually do. It's more well-written than average, offering surprising tidbits like the fact that part of Kung Fu Panda is supposedly based on a song by Black's band, Tenacious D. Awesome. "The Animator's Corner" and the Trivia Track are exclusive to the BD release. They're the best of the extras, but the others, which you'll find on the standard disc, are pretty impressive in their own right. There are a series of games, all of which I found more detailed and difficult than your average DVD remote button-masher, lessons on the Chinese zodiac, pandas, kung fu, and even a food network piece on Mr. Ping's Noodle House. It's as comprehensive as any Blu-Ray release that you'll find this year.

One final note: Oddly, there's a straight-to-video mini-sequel called Secrets of the Furious Five, a 24-minute all-new adventure featuring the same team and cast, but it's only available as a standard edition release that you need to buy in a two-package deal with Kung Fu Panda. Weird, weird, weird. Why not include another 24 minutes on the Blu-Ray release? It feels like something was rushed and perhaps Furious Five wasn't done in time to make the Blu-Ray release. The fact that real fans of Kung Fu Panda will have to have a Blu-Ray and Standard release on their shelf to have the full movie and its mini-sequel is weird. But it's the only complaint about one of the best Blu-Ray releases of the year.