Film review: Star-studded fortune cookie that's just for kicks

Published on Friday 27 June 2008 15:43

KUNG FU PANDA (PG) Directors: Mark Osborne and John Stevenson Running time: 92 minutes ***

KUNG Fu Panda does what it says on the tin: a paunchy, clumsy panda, Po, lives in a small Chinese village and longs to be a martial arts champ despite no formal training. Instead, he seems destined to become a noodle maker like his dad Mr Ping (James Hong) – although how Ping, who seems to be a goose, fathered a panda is a whole David Attenborough special in itself.

Po's dream seems a hopeless one, since the best fighters in the valley are the legendary Furious Five: Monkey (Jackie Chan), Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Crane (David Cross), who studied for years under Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). Yet by accidentally turning up at the right place at the right time, a panda with low self-esteem issues gets anointed as the chosen one and must undergo a crash course in kung fu mastery. Naturally, Po is apprehensive, because he has to face the chief villain, snow leopard Tai Lung (vibrantly voiced by Ian McShane), who can kick the pixels out of all his opponents.

DreamWorks' animated division disappointed last year with a perfunctory third Shrek film and a schticky Bee Movie, but Kung Fu Panda is some sort of return to the company's 2006 form of Over The Hedge and Flushed Away. It's lively, reasonably amusing and the artwork is beautifully realised, incorporating the various traditions of Chinese painting into background landscapes. Even when the character comedy and action start to pall, this is a knockout to look at, with a nicely executed chopstick duel over dumplings, and some balletic homages to the chopsocky film tradition.

It's also a nice touch that the martial-arts fighting styles of crane, monkey and mantis are embodied by the animals that represent them, although oddly, despite their A-list casting, the Furious Five lack personality – and, in the case of Jackie Chan's monkey, any lines of dialogue.

In an elementary story that's squarely aimed at kids, the film's underlying motivation is of the fortune-cookie variety. Like every Celine Dion song, the digitally animated instructional message just wants you to believe in yourself. Which is fair enough, but, like the panda, I'm hoping that the DreamWorks in-house philosopher is unlikely to breed in captivity.

On general release from Friday