Kung Fu Panda
Rated PG for sequences of martial arts action.
reviewed by Christopher Lyon
I've complained here once or twice about the lousy, ill-fitting movie titles that often herald lousy movies, so it's only fair to give credit when it's due. What's this movie about? A panda that does kung fu. Exactly. And, really, who would NOT want to see a panda doing kung fu, especially when given voice by Mr. Jack Black? Give it a good title, and they'll line up around the block.
The Story
Po (Jack Black) is a big, klutzy, adorable Chinese Panda who dreams of being a kung fu master and NOT of taking over his dad's noodle business. He idolizes the inhabitants of the Jade Palace, which sits atop the nearby mountain. There Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), a real kung fu master (and a mouse, I think), trains the Furious Five to fiercely fight the foes of freedom. The five include Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), and Crane (David Cross).
When the word goes out that the elderly kung fu patriarch Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), a turtle, is about to choose the Dragon Warrior, the one fighter worthy to read the scroll which will give him or her ultimate power, a desperate Po accidently drops himself into the middle of the ceremony. The old turtle selects him to be the Dragon Warrior, insisting there are no accidents in life.
Shifu and the Five are even more furious. How can a clumsy panda with no fu possibly be trained to become the Dragon Warrior? Po doesn't believe it himself, but he's willing to do anything to be part of their kung fu world. He changes his tune when the group learns that evil snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane) has escaped from his maximum security prison and is returning to the Jade Palace to claim the Warrior scroll as his own and take his vengeance on the town.
Can Shifu possibly turn the panda into a warrior in time? Can Po learn to love anything but food? And how do the animators make that adorable snow leopard look so evil and menacing?
The Verdict
What Works: "Kung Fu Panda" touches a lot of the same storyline bases as the recent "Forbidden Kingdom," but it turns out that adding a panda instead of a teenage boy from the future makes for a much better movie. Like the poorly-named "Kingdom," "Panda" (also with Jackie Chan) is about a fu-less fu fan who must discover the warrior within to save the day.
"Panda" succeeds where DreamWorks' previous animated film, "Bee Movie," failed because it never forgets most of the audience is too short for the tallest roller coaster. "Panda" is a brightly colored kids movie with enough soul to keep it from being "just a cartoon." Po provides near-constant slapstick humor and a joyful, winning loser appeal that many kids will relate to. The animation isn't Pixar-rich in detail, but it is bold and furry and all the gravity-defying kung fu action is exciting.Black's voice work is spot on. He is believable throughout as the big, lumbering, talking panda without ever not sounding like Jack Black.
What Doesn't Work: I wasn't as crazy about the rest of the voice cast. Dustin Hoffman's voice distracted me for a while, and I didn't think most of the Five were all that well suited to their celeb voices, either. Sometimes, it's better not to know the human face behind the voice of an animated character. And while the big showdown at the end of the film is exciting and nicely choreographed, the philosophical conclusion behind it was a letdown for me. More on that below.
Content: "Panda" might get a little dark and scary for the youngest tykes, especially in the scene where the bad cat escapes from prison.
Worldview
As is the case with many kung fu movies, "Panda" drips with pscho-spiritual worldview ideas and finally delivers a central worldview teaching that becomes the core of the film's plot and perspective.
Early on, Shifu struggles to accept Oogway's insistence that there are no accidents in the universe -- and that we are not truly in control of our circumstances. Although his teaching comes from various Eastern religions, the Bible would agree that God, not us, exercises ultimate control over the universe.
Oogway uses the example of a peach tree. Although we plant the seed, we cannot make the tree grow or force it to bear fruit, he tells a frustrated Shifu. Jesus used that same example in Mark 4: "Night and day, whether [the farmer] sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain." (Mark 4:27-28)
But Jesus' point in that chapter directly contradicts the movie's loudest message. What Po eventually learns is that "there is no secret ingredient" that makes a great warrior. That power comes from simple faith in yourself. If you believe you are a great warrior, then you are a great warrior.
It's not a new message for a kids' movie, but it's still a lame one. Faith in yourself is always a weak and limited faith, because human beings are weakened by sin and limited by time. Jesus taught in Mark 4 about a kingdom that will never end full of timeless people who have received a not-so-secret ingredient Ñ faith in something outside of ourselves called "the word." That word is the truth of Jesus Himself, the Savior of all who trust in Him to forgive and rid them of the sin that makes us weak and short-lived.
When the Word takes root in the soul of a believer, you can see it in their lives. They grow spiritually in remarkable ways; they change the world by producing God's fruit. They don't do it because they discover the warrior within; they are effective because of Christ within. He is the only hope for true glory.
Questions
- More and more animated films are released each year. Are you more or less likely to see an animated film than a "live action" movie?
- Aside from the panda, which was your favorite character in the film?
- Do you dig the kung fu? What are some of your favorite kung fu movies?
- What did you think about the ending of "Kung Fu Panda"?
- Do you think the film would have done as well if it had been called "Panda: Dragon Warrior" or "Po and the Furious Five" or "Revenge of the Snow Leopard"? Why or why not?
- Did you think the philosophy of "Kung Fu Panda" mostly agreed or disagreed with what you believe to be true from the Bible? What's really so wrong with a message that says, "Believe in yourself"?