Kung Fu Panda sounds like a dumb B movie that you would show your kids to keep them quiet for a couple hours. When I first saw the advertisements for this movie ten years ago, I had no desire to see it. The first time I did see it was a year later at the end of the school year and my Spanish teacher just needed something to fill the time. I didn’t pay attention because they were talking in Spanish and I was too far away to read the English subtitles. Needless to say, I was not that impressed with it. Yet everyone kept saying that this movie was really good. I didn’t understand why they were raving about it. It was years before I gave this movie another chance. Was it worth it?
It starts off with Po dreaming about doing kung fu with the Furious Five. He’s woken up by his dad and told to get to work. Po tries to talk to his dad about doing something other than working in the noodle shop, but Mr. Ping won’t have any of it.
Meanwhile, at the Jade Palace, Master Shifu is training his students, the Furious Five, when he’s told that Master Oogway wants to see him. Oogway tells Shifu that he’s had a vision of Tai Lung escaping from prison. Shifu overreacts and sends a messenger to the prison, telling them to double the guards. They discuss who should become the Dragon Warrior and defeat Tai Lung, and they decide to hold a tournament to find out. Po, in a desperate attempt to get to the tournament, straps himself to a rocket chair and flies over the walls of the Jade Palace, where Oogway points to him and says he is the Dragon Warrior. Shifu is very disappointed and plots how to make Po quit kung fu by morning.
In the mountains, Zeng arrives at the prison and sees where Tai Lung is being held. The warden assures Zeng that escape is impossible since Tai Lung is completely immobilized, all the guards have crossbows aimed at him, and he is their only prisoner. However, one of Zeng’s feathers falls off him, and Tai Lung uses his unchained tail to free himself of his bonds. He outmaneuvers the guards and escapes, but not before telling Zeng to tell Shifu that he’s out and ready to claim the title of Dragon Warrior.
Po starts his training with the Five, and he completely fails. None of them take him seriously and mock him behind his back. Tigress even tells him that he should get lost. Po gets discouraged and heads to a peach tree to binge eat. Oogway finds him there and encourages Po to never give up. The next day, Po spends all day training with the Five. He refuses to quit, so Shifu literally throws him out of the Palace. Po comes back and he learns that Tai Lung is Shifu’s adopted son. After Tai Lung’s betrayal, Shifu closed off his heart to everyone. Zeng returns and tells Shifu that Tai Lung has broken out of prison. Oogway tells Shifu that Po is the Dragon Warrior, deal with it, then promptly dies. When Shifu tells the others about the escape and Oogway’s death, Po tries to leave. Po finally admits that he’s no Dragon Warrior, and he only stayed because he was tired of his life with his dad. Shifu vows to train Po, and discovers that Po is food motivated. Using a montage, he manages to train Po.
Meanwhile, the Five decide to confront Tai Lung. He kicks their butts and sends them back to the Jade Palace battered, paralyzed, and hopeless. Shifu gives Po the Dragon Scroll, only to discover that it is empty. Confused, they start to evacuate the Valley of Peace. Shifu says that he will fight Tai Lung, and delay him long enough to get everyone out. Sure enough, Tai Lung appears and starts to fight Shifu.
During the evacuation, Po runs into his dad, upset that he can’t stop Tai Lung. Mr. Ping tries to cheer up Po by telling him the secret ingredient of his soup: nothing. He tells people that there’s a secret ingredient to make them think it’s special so that they’ll come back and buy it. Po realizes that this was the secret of the Dragon Scroll and races back to the Palace. He confronts Tai Lung and the two battle it out. Po wins by doing what he does best: having fun and stumbling into it. Po kills Tai Lung, and the Five accept him as a master of kung fu.
Po races back to the Palace and tells Shifu about Tai Lung. Shifu, finally at peace, thanks Po. The two decide to get something to eat, and the post-credits scene shows them eating dumplings under the peach tree, and a new peach tree is starting to grow from the seed Shifu planted earlier.
Po, voiced by Jack Black, is a fat panda who loves kung fu. He lives with his goose dad above their noodle shop. To put it gently, he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He honestly believes that pandas can come from geese, and since Mr. Ping never bothered to tell Po that he’s obviously adopted, he still believes this at the end of the film. (However, he might suspect he was adopted, since he seemed to be expecting Mr. Ping to say something different when he made a comment about them being related.) A lot of the “official” descriptions describe him as lazy, but I don’t see this in the film. He’s not motivated to do his job at his dad’s restaurant and he’s out of shape, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call him lazy. He still does his job, he’s just not passionate about it and doesn’t know how to tell his dad. He will always try his best to do whatever is asked of him. However, he is a major people pleaser, which is not something you normally see in movies. It makes sense with his character. He always tries to find humor in every situation, and he doesn’t give up easily.
Master Shifu, voiced by Dustin Hoffman, is a red panda and the teacher of the Five and Po. He is extremely stubborn, impatient, and judgmental. He constantly questions Oogway’s decisions, yet he would never step out of line and outright disobey the turtle. After Tai Lung’s betrayal, he closed off his heart to love, happiness, and every other good emotion out there. He is very strict with his students because he knows they’re capable of going further than they think they can. When he took Tigress in, he pushed her hard to train, but he didn’t let himself get emotionally attached to her. Even after everything Tai Lung did, Shifu still loves him and can’t bring himself to hurt his adopted son, so when Tai Lung attacks, he quickly loses. It’s only after Po defeats him that Shifu is about to start enjoying life again.
The Furious Five consists of Tigress, voiced by Angelina Jolie, Viper, voiced by Lucy Liu, Mantis, voiced by Seth Rogan, Monkey, voiced by Jackie Chan, and Crane, voiced by David Cross. The are never seen alone, always as a group. Even when they’re in one of the bedrooms, other characters either come in, or are shown listening on the other side of the wall. As a result, not much is known about their individual personalities. Tigress is the leader of the group, and everyone thought that she would be the Dragon Warrior. She’s the only one who doesn’t try to help Po at some point, and she and Shifu are the only ones who actively try to get rid of him. The rest don’t really want Po there either, but they’re at least sort of nice to him. They’re all highly respected masters of kung fu, and they each have their own fighting style, based off the real life fighting styles they’re named after.
Master Oogway, voiced by Randall Duk Kim, is a turtle and Shifu’s master. He is very old and very wise, but he has funny moments. He does his best to teach Shifu, but it doesn’t always work. He has this nerve punch thing that allows him to temporarily paralyze his opponent. He didn’t really interact much with the Five, but he’s always around to offer advice. That is until he dies via flower petals. Even though he is very wise, he’s not all-knowing, and he will admit if he doesn’t know something, like when he didn’t know what was written on the Dragon Scroll. Oogway is my favorite character, and while I wish he could have stuck around for the whole thing, I understand why they needed to kill him halfway through the movie.
Tai Lung, voiced by Ian McShane, is a snow leopard. He was adopted by Shifu as a small child, and learned kung fu. Shifu made the mistake of telling Tai Lung that he might be the chosen one, because that always works so well. Even though he’s not the Dragon Warrior, he’s still a highly skilled fighter, since he was able to learn how to do the paralyzing nerve thing after Oogway did it to him once. He was also in a five versus one battle and dominated the fight. He feels he was robbed of his destiny and is determined to prove everyone wrong. If he hadn’t been so focused on proving Oogway wrong, then maybe he could’ve been a master, or possibly fought alongside the Five. Yeah, Oogway saw darkness in his heart, but he didn’t turn evil until after Oogway said something. And one could argue that the darkness in him didn’t develop until he believed that he was destined to be the Dragon Warrior. Regardless, Tai Lung is a threat to anyone who dares challenge him.
Mr. Ping, voiced by James Hong, is a goose and the owner of the noodle shop. He lives and breathes noodles. He hates the idea of Po doing anything other than noodles, and the first thing he did when Po came back defeated was tie an apron around his waist. He does care about Po, but there is a huge disconnect, since Po feels like he can’t tell Mr. Ping about his dreams. He’s a really good cook, and he taught Po how to cook as well. When Po wants to rush off to the Jade Palace, Mr. Ping tells Po to take a cart of food with him to sell to customers, since he won’t pass up an opportunity to make money.
The animation quality is really good. You can see individual hairs on the mammals, and feathers on the birds. There’s textures in fabrics. The colors are really bright and colorful, but not in an over the top cartoony way (except for maybe in Po’s dreams, but those are supposed to be over the top). It’s a beautiful film to look at. The action scenes are choreographed well, and the tone of the various fights reflects who exactly is battling. For example, the Five fighting Tai Lung has a more serious tone than when Po fights him later in the movie. The backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous. You can easily tell when days pass because the morning sun looks different from the afternoon sun and the sunset, just like in real life. It’s not perfect, and animation has come a long way since 2008, but this a beautiful movie to look at.
The plot is fairly basic, but boy does this movie drive home the “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” theme. Like I said in my intro, when I first heard about this movie, I had no desire to see it. Everything I was seeing about it told me that I wouldn’t like it. The premise didn’t sound that interesting. It looked like it was going to rely heavily on stupid characters with basic, overused comedic gags and cliches, which I don’t like. I’m not a fan of Jack Black, so when I learned he was voicing the main character, I really didn’t want to see it. But I’m glad I saw this movie. Is it my favorite, no. It’s not even in my top twenty. Jack Black was a good casting. The comedy wasn’t spectacular, but it got a chuckle out of me every once in a while. However, it is a Dreamworks film, which means the writers and animators aren’t above using grotesque imagery and poop jokes here and there. Thankfully that is kept to a minimum here. This is the type of movie to put on when you want something entertaining where you don’t have to think too much about what’s going on.
I’m SJ and these are my real thoughts on Kung Fu Panda.
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