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Kung Fu Panda (2008)
Director: Mark Osborne, John Stevenson
Movie review
From Time Out New York
Kicks, punches, pratfalls, head smacks, tumbles and free falls galore: A parade of pain dominates Kung Fu Panda, which forgoes the rigors of character development for lazy, bone-crunching mayhem. A few clever lines of dialogue give occasional respite from the cacophony and hint at genuine emotion, but the focus always returns to concussive superficiality.
The halfhearted attempt at a story focuses on Po (Black), a softheaded, soft-bellied panda who dreams of being worthy enough to battle alongside the Furious Five—not Grandmaster Flash’s rap posse but a quintet of fearsome martial artists. Each hopes to be chosen as the Dragon Warrior, a legendary fighter entrusted with the ancient secrets of the much-heralded Dragon Scroll. A firecracker blunder catapults Po smack into a celebrated selection process, where he becomes the Chosen One. An accident, you say? “There are no accidents,” calmly insists ancient turtle Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), who apparently invented kung fu and doles out wisdom like fortune cookies.
The animation veers from dazzling (particularly in an opening sequence deeply indebted to Genndy Tartakovsky’s wildly superior cartoon saga, Samurai Jack) to merely mechanical, showing only sporadic visual flair but, like much of the movie, otherwise content to revel in its conventional invention.
Author: Stephen Garrett
Time Out New York Issue 662: June 5–June 11, 2008
User reviews of this film
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- Peter Kazmierczak said...
- Posted on Jul 05 2008 09:21 Not being a great cinema goer, I was dragged along to watch this for one of my daughters' birthday treats. I was expecting 90 minutes of boredom but was very pleasantly surprised. Superb animation, a gentle soundtrack and some thoughtful morality. Well worth a watch.
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- dm10003 said...
- Posted on Jun 09 2008 13:27 i agree qith the above comments, but mr.pain says it's "a film for children", it's more accurately a film for an audience that INCLUDES children, but probably not preschoolers.
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- mr. pain said...
- Posted on Jun 08 2008 23:31 Once again, a reviewer who seems to be replacing the reality of 'classic' Kung Fu movies with something completely fabricated... namely a depth of character development, scripting and historical accuracy. The important elements in a Kung Fu movie are... fighting, fight scenes, and more fighting. Oh, and a little fortune-cookie wisdom. The fight scenes in 'Panda' are far better researched than most western kung fu-styled films, and the heavily graphic designed format of this film is fairly awesome. Especially for what is, don't forget, a film for children.
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Cast & crew
Director: Mark Osborne, John Stevenson
Genre(s): Children's
Rated: PG
Duration: 95 mins
US Release: Jun 6 2008
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