A Pleasant Surprise

Rating: 8/10 (21 April 2013)

Kung Fu Panda was released in 2008, and is a very enjoyable children's film. Even though I had seen this film a few times before I watched it yesterday evening, I still found myself laughing out loud. This is not the genre I particularly enjoy watching, but I was still very entertained.
A stellar cast, which is led by Jack Black, consisting of Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, David Cross, Seth Rogan, James Hong, and Ian McShane all portraying kung fu fighting animals. Jack Black was the perfect casting choice for the obese yet ambitious panda who was our lead, with his fun voice to say the hilarious and often improvised lines for his character. Dustin Hoffman was also enjoyable, with his growly tone giving voice to the grumpy and masterful martial artist of a red panda. Angelina Jolie was the only weak link in this cast, I'm not a huge fan of her acting in the first place, but for a role as important as hers I felt that her character was very inconsistent with the rest. Thankfully the rest of the cast, with the interesting and fun voices of James Hong and Seth Rogan, was able to distract from her character to result in a hilarious arrangement of characters.
Mark Osborne and John Stevenson were the directors of this film, whose work was best seen during the interesting fight scenes. The choreography in these fast, fantastical, and funny fight scenes, was very well thought out and very creative. I was laughing very hard during the martial arts fight scenes with their use of the characters like the quick snake and the fat panda, making it both hilarious and kind of cool. The opening scene I was not too fond of, the way that the directors visualized it was very inconsistent with the rest of the movie, which was likely intentional, but unsuccessfully funny. Also, throughout the whole movie was a very entertaining score co-written by Oscar winner and Oscar Nominee Hans Zimmer and John Powell, respectively, my two personal favorite film composers. Overall, this movie was pieced together very well.
Kung Fu Panda was a surprise to me. I have always found that the quality of animated films to be up to par with any other films, with the exception of How To Train Your Dragon and Pixar Studio's films (specifically Wall-E,) is very rare. In comparison to many live-action films this movie falls very far, but as an animated children's movie with the sole intention of making kids, and some adults, laugh, this movie was very good. Kung Fu Panda was nominated for Best Animated Film at the Academy Awards in 2009, but lost to Disney/Pixar's Wall-E.
I give this movie a pleasantly surprised 7.8/10.