By Ryan Parsons | Image property of DreamWorks Animation
Kung Fu Panda
The news is looking slow today so we figured we might as well take another look at DreamWorks upcoming animation, Kung Fu Panda. The film's trailers look good, the clips look good, and now it would seem that the overall film also looks good.
Kung Fu Panda Reviewed
More reviews have surfaced for Kung Fu Panda and just about all of them are positive.
MSNBC
In the same way that Robin Williams’ tiringly manic shtick suddenly got about 100 percent more tolerable when it was coming out of the mouth of the shape-shifting genie in Disney’s “Aladdin,” Jack Black’s triumph-of-the-fat-guy routine gets a much-needed shot in the arm with “Kung Fu Panda,” a new animated comedy about a very unlikely martial arts champion.
Plot-wise, it’s every “Rocky” and “Karate Kid” movie taken to a wonderfully ridiculous extreme, but even if you know exactly where “Kung Fu Panda” is going, it’s a mostly entertaining journey. I’m no fan of casting big movie stars as voices in animated films, but Black and Hoffman have great fun taking their characters from exasperated adversaries to bedgrudging comrades.
ReelViews
Kung Fu Panda adopts a different, less zany tone than one might expect from a movie with that title, especially considering that Jack Black has been brought on board to provide the lead voice. While it would be unfair to say that the movie doesn't present its share of comedic moments, the animated production as a whole jettisons non-stop jokiness in favor of something a little more serious. Thus, Kung Fu Panda ends up presenting a message about believing in oneself that might not have come across as successfully had it tended toward outright fatuousness.
In recent years, computer animation has been in the doldrums. While Kung Fu Panda isn't the movie to re-invigorate the genre, it's made with enough technical savvy and provides sufficient fun (especially for younger viewers) that it should be a major player at the summer box office. Although the basic storyline and moral are standard animated film building blocks, Kung Fu Panda contains enough funny material, low-key thrills, and moments of genuine pathos (a flashback detailing Shifu's past connection to Tia Lung) to prevent it from seeming too much like a re-tread.
You can read the entire reviews for Kung Fu Panda by clicking the bold links above.
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