Kung Fu Panda (06 June 2008)
directed by Mark Osborne, John Stevenson
starring Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Ian McShane, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Randall Duk Kim, James Hong, Dan Fogler, Michael Clarke Duncan, Laura Kightlinger
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MPAA rating: Studio: DreamWorks Animation, Paramount Pictures Script: Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger Music: John Powell, Hans Zimmer Running time: 92 minutes Tags: Action; Animation; Comedy; cranes; Family Film; fireworks; foxes; mantises; Martial Arts; monkies; prisons; restaurants; scrolls; tigers; turtles; vipers Tactical strength: [6/10]
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for sequences of martial arts action
Po (voice by Jack Black) the panda has always dreamed of kung fu. He knows the history of the local kung fu masters by heart, and he -- like most boys -- longs to learn the ways of the masters and take a place at their side. But Po's father, Mr. Ping (a stork voiced by James Hong), runs a noodle stand and expects Po to take over the stand.
Meanwhile, high above the village in the Jade Palace, the kung fu master Oogway (a turtle voiced by Randal Duk Kim) has a vision that the evil Tai Lung (voiced by Ian McShane) will break out of prison and attack the village. Oogay calls an assembly to choose the legendary Dragon Warrior who will defend the village and the temple from Tai Lung. The Dragon Warrior will read the famed Dragon Scroll, which legend says will grant the reader the ultimate power in the universe.
The Jade Palace's kung fu master teacher, Shifu (voice by Dustin Hoffman) lines up his five amazing students (Tigress, Monkey, Viper, Mantis, and Crane) to have Oogway choose one as the Dragon Warrior. By accident, just as Oogway begins to point toward his selection of the Dragon Warrior, Po falls from the sky, lands in front of Oogway's finger, and Oogway confirms Po as the Dragon Warrior. Weh Shifu protests that Oogway elected Po by accident, Oogway pronounces, "There are no accidents."
From this point on, you could hijack the script from just about any wushu film. Po shows his determination to train in spite of the taunting and beating he receives from the five students. Disgusted, the students decide to face Tai Lung themselves, but fail miserably. Once Shifu realizes (with some hefty prompting from Oogway) that Po seriously wants to serve as the Dragon Warrior, Po goes through quick but rigorous training, reads the Dragon Scroll, and faces off against Tai Lung.
The script has some fun moments and some very funny bits, but it doesn't do much more than provide literal animal replacements for the martial arts styles often displayed in the wushu film tradition. A student may study in the crane style. In Kung Fu Panda, the crane himself studies martial arts. Various martial arts styles named after animals provide some indication of the type of movements you will find in that particular style. To have animals playing the parts of martial arts experts, you would expect to see a greater emphasis placed on the animal's specific abilities based on that animal's physical characteristics. In Kung Fu Panda, we see this animal characterization to a minute degree, but the opportunity seems to go generally ignored.
Watching Kung Fu Panda, I came to the realization that animated martial arts just don't impress me. No one had to study for years in order to make the amazing moves demonstrated on the screen. Instead, the characters were just drawn that way. When you watch real actors -- even if suspended on a wire -- you still see the real effort and training that had to go into the actor's martial arts skills. Wushu film typically takes a commoner with on previous martial arts training, puts that person through a rigorous training regimen, and releases a deadly martial artists against the enemy. In the films with real actors, we can more easily place ourselves in the role of the commoner turned martial arts wizard. In a cartoon, I can't just imagine that someone with a dab of paint and some digital manipulation will ever turn me into a martial artist.
Now don't get me wrong. I think the art of Kung Fu Panda has some gorgeous scenery, some very well choreographed action scenes, and an attention to detail that makes almost every frame a pleasure to view. In some cases, I almost wished that we didn't have to see Po's antics because the frames often seem like a beautiful landscape disrupted by a garrish clown standing in the foreground. I do think the directors used the Matrix-like slow motion shots about twices as much as needed.
Also, I thought the casting worked incredibly well. The actors' voices suited the characters so well that in most cases I listened to each character's words, rather than hearing someone talking and thinking, "Hey, that's Dustin Hoffman." Even Jack Black seemed somewhat restrained from his usual boistrousness and embued Po with many levels of emotion from longing and love to disappointment and dispair.
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