'Kung Fu Panda' delivers one-two punch

Published: June 6, 2008

Beholden to treasured cinematic legacies and a culture shared by over a billion people, "Kung Fu Panda” deftly dodges a minefield of potential disappointments and emerges victorious. Its generic title might be too on-the-nose, but its spirit is wise.

Po (voiced by Jack Black) is a bumbling but sweet-natured panda whose dreams are populated by martial arts fantasies that starkly contrast his reality. He works in a noodle shop run by his father, a duck (longtime character actor James Hong) whose greatest hope for his son is to be a chow fun master, not a kung fu warrior.

This roly-poly naif seems like an unlikely hero, but a spectacular entrance at a competition prompts ancient master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) to proclaim him as the "Dragon Warrior.” Po immediately earns the ire of the Furious Five: Monkey (Jackie Chan), Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Viper (Lucy Liu), Mantis (Seth Rogen) and Crane (David Cross), and instructor Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) resents having the big lug forced on him.

Poor Po seems ill-equipped for his destiny: he is a stress eater lacking in confidence and ability. But as Shifu comes around to Po's good qualities, the panda learns to take his perceived weaknesses and turn them into strengths just in time to battle Tai Lung (Ian McShane), a cast-out snow panda with a fierce drive to be the Dragon Warrior.

Directors John Stevenson and Mark Osbourne infuse "Kung Fu Panda” with lush artistic textures and strong animation — visual references to both modern Asian animation and Song Dynasty landscape paintings enrich the production.

Furthermore, Dreamworks is to be commended for finally breaking away from its "Shrek” mode of infusing its animated films with endless pop cultural references. There is not a single one here — not even a nod to the poorly dubbed fists-of-fury drive-in favorites of yesteryear. "Kung Fu Panda” is a quest film that plays it nearly as straight as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” albeit with talking animals and a cover of "Kung Fu Fighting” playing over the credits.

— George Lang

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