‘Panda’ also keeps
adults entertained

At the Movies
By Senitra Horbrook

The best kinds of animated films are those that kids and adults will enjoy. After all, it’s never much fun to sit through a movie yawning and checking your watch. I’ve been there, done that and hoped I wouldn’t be doing it during Kung Fu Panda.
Luckily, Kung Fu Panda meets the criteria for a good animated family film, and the hour and a half flew by without one watch check.
While the movie has the familiar children’s movie messages of self-acceptance and believing in yourself, the rest of it is funny and action-packed, making it worth a trip to the theater for adults and kids.
Kung Fu Panda is the story of Po (voiced by Jack Black), an obese panda who dreams of becoming a kung fu warrior. Instead, he spends his days serving up noodles and other Chinese food goodies with his father, a goose named Mr. Ping (James Hong). A running joke through the film stems from a panda having a goose as a (seemingly) biological father.
It seems like a fluke when Po is surprisingly chosen to be the Dragon Warrior and designated to take down the evil Tai Lung (Ian McShane). This is a total shock to the Furious Five (Angelina Jolie as Tigress, Jackie Chan as Monkey, Seth Rogen as Mantis, Lucy Liu as Viper and David Cross as Crane), a group of highly skilled kung fu warriors who expected one of their own to be chosen as the Dragon Warrior.
Po is trained by a reluctant master named Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and manages to befriend the Furious Five. At first, Shifu tries to humiliate Po and make him quit, but when he sees Po’s determination and his will to not give up, Shifu changes his tune and decides to really teach Po the art of kung fu.
My only beef with the movie is that it takes food to motivate an already obese panda to learn to fight, although there is a pretty neat scene with a dumpling.
Kung Fu Panda, made by DreamWorks Animation, is visually impressive, though still not up to par with Pixar.
There are lots of fight scenes, but they are relatively tame with no bloodshed and no one appearing to endure any extreme pain.
I’m not ready to proclaim Po the successor to Shrek, but much of Kung Fu Panda is very funny and filled with "awesomeness." There’s a line near the end (if you’ve seen the trailer, you know what I’m talking about) that is sure to get lots of laughs from everyone in the theater.
Black, who is slightly rotund himself, is affable as the overweight warrior-in-training panda that has trouble making it up the stairs. All the other A-list star voices play second fiddle to Black, with Hoffman getting a fair amount of time onscreen. Jolie tries to add some depth to her one-note character, but she just doesn’t get enough screen time to make much of an impression.
Kids will be kung fu fighting out of the theater, and you’ll have that famous song from the 1970s stuck in your head while an updated version plays during the end credits. In fact, you may have that song stuck in your head every time you think of the movie. I’ve been singing it to myself while writing this review. ••
Movie Grade: B+