AT THE MOVIES WITH JUSTIN SIMS
Kung Fu Panda
It took me a while to decide which movie to do my first review for The Waynedale Newspaper because, honestly, there wasn’t much out that I wanted to see. From early days, I kept watching previews for Kung Fu Panda and just thought it was going to be another DreamWorks animated film they threw together in between making Shreks, but as the trailers kept getting longer, I began to think it might be better than my original assumption. For the most part, my early perceptions were incorrect, but there were still some things in the way that prevented this film from being great.
Of course I have to put it out there and say the animation in the film was perfect. It was pretty much flawless in the way the characters moved. The secondary animation which are the small movements that most don’t notice, is amazing. They captured the perfect gelatin body movements of an overweight panda who struggles to learn karate.
If you’ve seen a preview for Panda, you pretty much know the entire storyline and can already guess how it ends. For those who have not seen anything, basically it’s about a panda who has aspirations of becoming a ninja warrior, even though he’s never taken a martial arts class. Fearing the revenge of the best martial arts student who has just broken out of prison, the master decides to choose who would become the Dragon Warrior and defeat Tai Lung. Quite obviously it becomes Po, the uncoordinated panda, who must become the Dragon Warrior and restore peace to the valley.
It’s the stories predictability and small questionable moments that pulls this film down. They never explain why Po has a duck for a father. Maybe they didn’t feel it was completely necessary, but it became bothersome wondering why. Other downsides to Panda, which is a recurrent problem with DreamWorks’ animated films, were the voices not matching the character, often because they choose to go with a big name rather than an accurate voice. The headliner is Jack Black as Po the Panda, but other main voices you might recognize are Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, and Jackie Chan. While sitting there watching the story go through the motions, I found myself wondering who these people doing the voices were. I recognized the voices, but couldn’t put a face with them. This is where I found it to be problematic; I was barely thinking about the story.
Overall the film was very fun to sit and watch. Jack Black gave a great performance as Po especially with his karate sound effects. It’s a very funny movie the whole family can enjoy. It does have some downsides to it, but most films do. Kung Fu Panda is one of the films that will come out this year that you can just sit back and enjoy, but if you look deeper at it, it has a good message, too. 4 stars.
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