The film has a plethora of kung fu action sequences, as you’d want and expect by the name, which bring to mind the likes of Jet Li, Jackie Chan (who lends his voice as the monkey of the Furious Five), and even such big-budget, blockbuster stuff as The Matrix. The bonus here is that it’s obviously animated and thus there isn’t any need for wires or special effects. From our panda’s very fun training sequences to the thrilling scenes involving our villain, the film always keeps the pace high and it zips along nicely, something helped even more by its brisk under-90 minute runtime. It sits comfortably among the big budget action stuff that’s been released this summer and in some cases even surpasses them.
Aside from the impressively emotive animation by DreamWorks it’s Jack Black as Po who’s the shining star of the film. His voice is very much suited to the world of animation and he brings his usual energetic, outlandish nature to the character. Although for anyone who’s used to Black in any number of other movies it’s always very clear it’s him behind a microphone, it’s still completely works within the context of the film. Would a character, human or otherwise, in this time period really talk using such words as awesome and cool? Probably not but in the end does it really matter? As with all animations it’s all about delving into a world unrealistic and dissimilar to our own. Sometimes it doesn’t work and sometimes it does and Kung Fu Panda is an example of the latter.
I’m always impressed, regardless of whether I like the movie or not, with the cast of actors these animated films seem to get use of the voices of. Whether that’s down to a big paycheque for them or how fun I’ve heard it is to do it I simply don’t know. But whatever the reason the result is great; we get to hear some of the all time and currently great movie star’s voices accompanied with some fun characters to both look at and simply be with for 90 minutes. Here we have, aside from the aforementioned Jack Black and Jackie Chan, the likes of Angelina Jolie as Tigress, Seth Rogen as Mantis (one of the funniest supporting characters), Ian McShane as our villain Tai Lung and Dustin Hoffman as the great leader Shifu. You can tell that these very well known actors are having so much fun doing this and because of this the film feels a lot more fun than it might have otherwise been.
Article comments