Kung Fu Panda: Review

 

Dreamworks has hit a home run with this film. From the very beginning I fell in love with this movie.

 

Kung Fu Panda is set in the fictitious Valley of Peace where kung fu is like a religion and the kung fu masters were revered. But when the valley is threatened with the return of the evil Tai Lung, the kung fu masters decide to choose the Dragon Warrior to protect the people. But things get a lil screwed up when Po, an obese slacker panda is chosen.

 

Kung Fu Panda takes every best fight scene from every best Shaw brothers film and merging them together to make an action animated film that I hold on par to The Incredibles. The kung fu fight scenes in this is absolutely gorgeous to watch and they do a lot of creative stunts with these characters that real life actors can never do. It really comes across like real people fighting and it's really exciting to watch.

 

And this film is hella hella funny. I'm still in stitches when I think about the scenes from this movie two days later. This is everything an animation comedy should be. Finally, I have a smart, funny, kick ass animation film that doesn't rely on pop culture reference jokes or fart jokes to make the show entertaining. This film is genuinely hilarious to the bone. Even some scenes that weren't meant to be funny had me laughing my ass off.

 

Jack Black brings the funny to the character of Po which is by far one of the funniest animated characters this year. Po has a lot of heart to him, he's likable, he's adorable and he is super hilarious. Especially when he's fighting, cause his kung fu style resembles that of a drunken kung fu master where it's completely spontaneous almost accidental for the most part.

 

 

The filmmaker really did his homework when it comes to paying homage to kung fu and kung fu movies. The Furious 5 as we may already know, is an homage to the Five Deadly Venoms and I've heard that the characters monkey, tiger, viper, crane and mantis symbolized the 5 styles of kung fu which they got down to a T. They really didn't have to go that far to make Kung Fu Panda a more entertaining film but the fact they did that makes this movie even more enjoyable for kung fu fans.

 

And great voice cast overall, Dustin Hoffman is almost unrecognizable as Shifu, Angelina Jolie is great, Jackie Chan is great, David Cross- great casting on his part, Lucy Liu and Seth Rogen were fantastic and Ian McShane! God damn that dude has a cool voice! 

 

So after many years of Pixar reigning as animation king, Dreamworks finally comes out with a classic themselves that could very well take the Oscar from Pixar this year. I love the hell out of this, this is my favorite animated film this year.

RATING: 9/10