Not as engaging as I thought it would be

Rating: 6/10 (5 June 2008)

I was definitely excited to see Kung Fu Panda. I "prepared for awesomeness" as its fun trailer suggested, but it wasn't as engaging as I thought it would be. It opens with a stylized fight sequence that belongs more in highbrow children's books that thankfully ended after my first yawn.
Po (voice by Jack Black) is an impressionable, fat panda who regularly daydreams about kung fu fighting as he helps his pop run their noodle shop. He finally gets to realize his dream when he is chosen to be trained by the great kung fu master Shifu (voice by Dustin Hoffman) to fight against the evil Tai Lung (voice by Ian McShane), much to the chagrin of Shifu's highly trained posse of Tigress (voice by Angelina Jolie), Monkey (voice by Jackie Chan), Mantis (voice by Seth Rogen), Viper (voice by Lucy Liu) and Crane (voice by David Cross).
It had truly awesome fight scenes (especially noteworthy Tai Lung's escape from prison) and its share of kung fu wisdom, but overall, the writing and illustration just wasn't as clever or as funny as it promised. The animals were plain and androgynous so their personalities were very reliant on their characters' voices, especially the Tigress (thanks to Jolie's unmistakably sultry voice). Only the panda had a wider variety of facial expressions, and only very few of his lines were able to elicit some chuckles from the adults in the audience. The children were more easily enamored.