Review : Kung Fu Panda

I'm a little behind on the movie reviews. AM has been talking about seeing this movie for, oh, I don't know, like, a year. It finally came out, and off we went. it's Dreamworks' first real animated offering that wasn't a Shrek movie since, hmmmm, Over the Hedge? It's been a while, anyway. The only preconceived notion that I had going in to this movie was that I was pretty sure that I was going to annoyed by Jack Black, as the voice of the Panda. I was, thankfully, not. Yeah, you could tell that it was Jack Black, but he at least attempted to play a character. Quite unlike Shifu, who was played so brilliantly that when the credits rolled, I was utterly astonished to find that he was voiced by Dustin Hoffman.

I flat out loved this movie. I loved the look, and the art direction. The plot was offbeat, but still engaging enough that at the end, when it all came around full circle, I wasn't sitting there thinking "yeah, I got that thirty minutes ago, thanks". I was genuinely caught off guard. Maybe because I'm slow, maybe I was just too busy being entertained, hard to say. The escape of Tai Lung is probably the most awesome action sequence I have seen in a film, live action included, in a long time. I usually don't like it when all of the voices are played by "name" actors, who, in general, couldn't voice act their way out of a paper bag. And although most of the voice actors for Kung Fu Panda were A-List types, it didn't bother me as much as I would have thought.

This movie was funny because it was a funny movie, not because it was a movie that had funny people in it. It was hugely entertaining. Good fun, enjoyed by the entire gang and can only be given


Five Stars