Audacious martial arts comedy

Rating: 8/10 (8 March 2009)

Jack Black, playing completely against type, is an animated panda named Po who's been mistaken for the mystical, world-saving Dragon Warrior. Po's lack of ability - not to mention a recognizable waistline - runs counter to all that Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) teaches, and it doesn't ingratiate him with his idols, the Furious Five, either. This fast-paced comedy adventure is heavier on actual culture than pop-culture references, which is forever to its credit, and the game work by Black and Hoffman aid the rather generic storyline (fat boy must overcome odds to beat skilled ninja) immeasurably.
There really is plenty to like about this movie. Let's start with the casting. Jack Black is a formidable, engaging comic personality to begin with, and he infuses Po with such exuberant naiveté and vulnerability that he's just like one of us, if we too were slovenly, belching pandas. Hoffman is also spot on as the wizened and wise Master Shifu, a red panda (although with far less red fur than you'd think), stereotypically tough on his charges but with a heart of gold. Somewhere in there, anyway. Maybe it's just a heart of emerald, or something.
Aside from those two marquee names, Ian McShane (of Deadwood) is the nefarious Tai Lung, a former pupil of Shifu who has just broken out of prison, stronger than ever and with revenge on his mind. Considering he's voicing a creature in a PG-rated animated film, McShane's Tai Lung is full of menace and hatred, a vile enemy who's apt to scare the youngest audience members. But I'm sure the adults can handle his intensity, if they look away every now and again.
Po has idolized the Furious Five all his life and desperately wants to see who will be selected by Master Oogway, Shifu's master, as the Dragon Warrior. Through an awesomely funny yet contrived circumstances, Po is chosen. "There are no accidents," intones Oogway mystically. Being chosen as the Dragon Warrior doesn't gain Po any favors with Shifu's current students, the famed Furious Five - Crane (David Cross), Viper (Lucy Liu), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Monkey (Jackie Chan), and Tigress (Angelina Jolie), who thought that one of them would be The Chosen One (tm). And so Po must prove himself to the other students and to his master, who just wants him to go away.
One debit is that the supporting cast seems to be there for their names. Liu, Chan, Rogen, and Cross, four excellent talents, barely get any lines at all, and although Jolie gets a little more, uh, voice time, she doesn't really bring anything extra to the table. Stunt casting, is how I feel about it. Stunt casting.
Even so, I laughed my ass off, despite the wholesome moral of even the littlest person making a difference or something. The point is that Black made me believe in Po. When he's jumping up the side of a cliff to get a sacred scroll, so was I. When Po is eating Master Shifu out of house and home, so was I. And when Po believed in himself, so did I. This movie was full of moments that make me remember exactly why I watch movies in the first place: to laugh and to believe.