Stale Popcorn

It’s always been funny to me that I’ve never really tired of Jack Black’s schtick like I have with many other ‘comedy actors’ out there. Asides from Be Kind Rewind, which as an overall film annoyed me so much that I pulled my own review of it from this very site a matter of seconds after publishing it, there’s nary a Jack Black movie that comes along that I don’t enter into with the mindset of “Well, at least I’m guaranteed one big laugh-out-loud moment!” He’s earned his props in the realms of so-bad-that-they’re-great flicks from the early 90s (Airborne, Neverending Story III, Bio-Dome) moved into scene-stealing in mainstream genre movies (Enemy of the State, High Fidelity, Mars Attacks and The Cable Guy), fucked around on the fringes of cult movies (who can forget his ‘Dick Van Dyke’ turn in Run Ronnie Run, a hilariously under-rated comedy since disowned by its creators, singing “Kick Her In Her Cunt”) and blasted into the mainstream once and for all with the likes of School of Rock, Shallow Hal and King Kong) … and he’s never once came across as if his “time is up” so to speak. Yes, I’m even willing to give kind regard to Nacho Libre!

With that particular mindset, you can just imagine that when someone told me the news that Jack Black was doing the voice in a new Dreamworks animated movie and then they added that it was called Kung Fu Panda and that he’d be playing the title role, I couldn’t help but go out of my way to try and book tickets before they’d even completed making the movie.

Kung Fu Panda is a whole heap of fun. It’s the best movie Dreamworks have produced in a long, long time. I’m a fan of Madagascar and Over The Hedge but not so big a fan that I can’t see they really are paint-by-numbers productions of the “let’s throw out another talking animal movie” ilk. Dreamworks’ animated wing has always smacked to me of being like biased parents – they have their “favourite child” (Shrek) and then they have the ginger-haired, freckley one that they kind of have to love (the movies they make in between Shrek sequels).

Well, after Shrek The Third I was so over that franchise that I was kind of hoping that Dreamworks blew me out of the water with what they threw out next and that it was so good that a new, fresh franchise could offer an alternative to the inevitable fourth Shrek and the forced-out-due-to-box-office-returns Madagascar 2 (coming soon!). That next movie, Bee Movie, was “nice” and “funny” but ‘great shakes’ it was not. The movie after that though? Man, there’s your contender right there!

Kung Fu Panda is just a really lovely movie. I had a blast with it. More then anything though, it’s not a spoof. It’s not just hawking some barrage of post-modern zingers off the “kung fu” concept. They could take out all the animated talking animals and replace them with manga animated humans and the story would still play absolutely brilliantly.

On a visual level, there’s moments within this film that are just absolutely beautiful. The opening hand-drawn animation is thoroughly striking and the sequence in which Tai Lung escapes from his inescapable prison is one of the most breathtakingly audacious set-pieces you’ll find in the animated genre. It is completely perfect and fully formed and is up there with anything Pixar has delivered.

The film isn’t perfect though – the script is a little too preachy in getting its message across to “the kids”, the ending feels a little rushed, Angelina Jolie is miscast and the rest of the voice casting is pure “promotional stunt work”. Don’t be fooled at seeing the likes of David Cross, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan listed as doing characters – they barely speak more than two lines each in the whole movie. This is very much a showcase for the double-act that is Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman. Put these two in a live action movie now! They’re brilliant!

I had an absolute blast with this film and I cannot wait to have it on DVD to watch that prison break sequence over and over again. I took my four year old nephew to see this and he didn’t move from start to finish, it completely transfixed him. You cannot ask for anything more from this film then what it delivers – it is wonderfully animated, very funny, surprisingly touching and a sign that Dreamworks can up their game and deliver the goods without the big green ogre front and centre.

It’s inevitable that WALL-E will scoop the Best Animated Oscar but I’d like to see Kung Fu Panda not walk away from the fight just yet.

I urge you to check this out. It’s a real delightful treat.

Posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 9:00 am under Movie Reviews (Theatrical) by Gazz.
Tags:Theatrical Reviews

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