Bitter disappointment...

Rating: 4/10 (21 November 2008)

It never fails to amaze me how lame American animated movies tend to be. Maybe it's because I've been an anime otaku for so long (since washed-out bootlegs in the original Japanese- sans subtitles- were first offered up at comic book conventions for ridiculously high prices), or maybe because I grew up on the likes of ASTRO BOY and JONNY QUEST (which were both aimed at kids whose sensibilities weren't of the Special Needs variety), but the current crop of Big Budget cgi cartoons (including those that blend the cgi with live-action characters, like TRANSFORMERS and the two FANTASTIC FOUR fiascos) leave me numb. Perhaps because I've also been a martial arts movie fan for most of my life, I was looking forward to KUNG FU PANDA. My own KUNG FU CATS (which also featured a hero named Po) was available for quite some time online (at fanboycomics.biz)- until the site went down- but it certainly wasn't written down to the video game level of KUNG FU PANDA. Anyone fed up with this kind of slap-in-the-face stupidity should check out some of the aforementioned anime (Japanese animation).