LINKS
Joseph Campbell would immediately recognize the Hero's Journey propelling this latest DreamWorks' animation, in which flabby, physically challenged Jack Black supplies the voice for a flabby, physically challenged panda who winds up fulfilling an ancient prophesy, becoming a great warrior and leaving the world a better place. In the animated features of the early 21st century, this is pretty much par for the course.
Kung Fu Panda doesn't offer much more than a reasonably pleasant but surprisingly savvy stew of talking animals engaged in grand quests, and Joltin' Joe C's theory isn't the only mythos to be reckoned with here. George Lucas' shadow likewise looms large, with Black's fuzzy, flabby hero, Po, inexplicably chosen for his world-shaking mission and trained by a wise, Yoda-like master (a pint-sized mouse voiced by Dustin Hoffman), while a promising Jedi leopard (Ian McShane) slinks over to the dark side to become the movie's monumental Darth Vader figure.
Fleshing out the story's bare bones is a goodly amount of slapstick, some fairly clever one-liners, several lavishly choreographed, martial-arts-based action sequences, and an eye-catching animation style that owes as much to ancient Asian scroll paintings as it does to the classic Shaw Brothers films of the '60s and '70s. There's a little something for almost everyone here, but kung fu fanboys will take particular delight in touches like the legendary schools of martial arts made literal via Po's anthropomorphic sidekicks -- a snake, crane, mantis, monkey and tiger (the last two given voice by Jackie Chan and Angelina Jolie).
Kung Fu Panda (PG) Featuring the voices of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Ian McShane, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogan and Lucy Liu. Opens June 6 at local theaters. 3.5 stars
