Kung Fu Panda Movie Review

Let’s get straight to the point: Kung Fu Panda was great! Very funny, entertaining, and cool fight choreography and camera work. There’s a really fun chop stick fight that everyone will get a kick out of.

Jack Black voices the character of Po the son of a noodle shop owner. To the surprise of everyone, Po is thrust into his destiny of becoming the Dragon Warrior. Unfortunately, not everyone believes in him, including his Master (begrungingly) Shifu played by Dustin Hoffman. The circumstances to which Po, becomes the Dragon Warrior push aside Shifu’s diciples, The Furious Five *snickers* which include Tigress ( Angelina Jolie), Monkey ( Jackie Chan ) , Viper ( Lucy Liu ), Crane and Mantis. Jack Black’s portrayal of Po will have you chuckling with his delusional panda positivity. Things get serious, when Shifu’s original apprentice, Tai Lung ( Ian McShane ) escapes from his prison guarded by a rhinoceros voiced by Michael Clark Duncan to claim the right of becoming The Dragon Warrior from Shifu.

There are some great one liners especially by Jack Black and some good bits of fortune cookie wisdom as well, my favorite if I can remember correctly, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”

Overall, I really thought this flick was great, it really gave you the sense of the main characters, their motivations and the journey of their character arc and overcoming their obstacles. The only minor problem I had with the story was that you don’t really see any of the other characters at all in the final act. It’s not that big a deal though.

The values of:

• Believing in yourself
• Utilizing your skills and talents to their fullest
• Redemption

Are major themes to this story. It’s ideal if you want to take your punky kid and/ or punky significant other to the movies! You’ll laugh all the way through and feel good about yourself for at least 20 minutes after the movie until reality seeps back in.

Oh and BTW, if you want sit through the end credits, you’ll get to hear an updated version of Kung Fu Fighting performed by Cee-Lo ( of Gnarls Barkley ) and Jack Black and then one last little scene that’s pretty, dare I say, “cute.”

MY RECOMMENDATION: SEE THIS MOVIE IMMEDIATELY