Kung Fu Panda (2008)

We all know I have a thing for animated animals dancing. It's a strange ticklish spot for me the way Tina is for t. Anyway, animated animals doing kung fu, almost as good. Animated animals doing kung fu poorly while screaming "waaaaaaaaaaa!," hilarious.

So, Po the Panda (Jack Black) dreams (literally) of being a kung fu warrior. The problem is that he's a panda, a fat panda. Well, he gets his chance when the uber bad guy, Tai Lung, breaks out of prison and a dragon warrior has to be chosen by the ancient turtle kung fu master. The assumption is that the dragon warrior will be chosen from one of the five kung fu warriors under the tutelage of Shifu (Dustin Hoffman): Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), or Crane (David Cross). Well, that doesn't go as planned and Po is proclaimed the dragon warrior to be. That's slightly problematic, of course, because he's a panda, a fat panda. Kung Fu and hilarity ensues and, of course, the day is saved and bad guy vanquished.

Yes, it's formulaic. But I'm a little tired of critics using that as a reason a movie is supposedly bad. Do we want the panda to fail? No. Would we like the cartoon movie if the panda failed? No. So why is it bad when the panda doesn't fail? It's not. The movie is for kids. Despite having watched a bazillion movies with the same storyline since the beginning of time, kids will still be surprised when the less talented good wins out over the more talented bad. And, yes, it has a bit of an obvious moral. Again, it's for children. If this were a movie with real people and meant for adults with bloody battle sequences and actual weapons, a moral would be a huge mistake but this isn't that movie.

My one tiny complaint is that I think the Tigress needed to look a little more feminine--she looked like a boy, a boy that talks like Angelina Jolie.

Meanwhile, the movie is funny, well-animated, well-timed, and not boring. I liked it quite a bit--plus there was a preview for Madagascar Escape 2 Africa that included the dancing lemurs! What more could a girl want from animation?