The voice performers themself, and by extension, the film, finds itself complimented by some truly dazzling animation, with most everything having a slick complexity to it, as well as a lot of flash and color in the animation to really liven up this world, as well as the humor. It is a Dreamworks family film, and, as I said, a rather conventional one at that, so go in expecting some cheesy gags from slapstick or Jack Black's Po character just being a big annoying dork, but more than that, expect the humor to, more often than not, really hit with charm and sharp delivery, and also expect that humor to be complimented by some colorful voice work, something to be expected when you've a cast of charmers this massive. In this day and age, story originality doesn't seem to be a big part on the criteria for satisfying family films, but what expectations that do fall upon the shoulders of this film only fail at going unsatisfied. However, just because this is nothing that strays too far away from its roots, that doesn't mean that the film isn't about as enjoyable as the other films that it's taking from. I don't know, because I'm not a big trekker for kung fu films, but what I can tell you is that this story and its morals are pretty familiar ones, both within the kung fu genre and family film genre. It's a family film, so I'm not asking for the most unconventional storyline since. Still, as much as the editor needed a coffee break, I don't know if we need too much more of more of the same, because as good of a story this is, it's been done to death, not that any kids would know, because I doubt that there are a lot of little youngsters out there that are hardcore fans of the classic bone-crushing, head-smashing martial arts epics that mommy and daddy probably haven't even heard of. Of course, maybe not one this brief, because although the brief runtime isn't terribly damaging to the film, there are points where things feel a bit tacked-on or thrown-together, from some points of exposition to that moderate cop-out of an ending. Now, I'm not asking for this film to go all-out martial arts film homage and gratuitously run two-and-a-half to three hours, but really, when's the last time a sweeping character study that just barely runs a mere hour-and-a-half worked? Well, I couldn't tell you, but now that I think about it, it couldn't be for a lack of trying, because this film is still rather tight enough to show that a brief martial arts character piece epic could work. Slightly obscure Tenacious D references aside, this film is actually pretty darn cool, yet that's not quite enough for you to completely forget about its flaws. However, next to that, this drop the prejudice for this Dreamworks family film, because although it does get kind of cheesy, if you think that Jack Black is inexplicably as awesome as he fancies himself in real life, then watching this film really will cause your brain to explode out of the top of your head like that one guy at the climax of Tenacious D's performance of "Master Exploder" in "The Pick of Destiny". That was just a little inside joke for all of the Tenacious D fans out there, even though someone into something that crazy isn't likely to even be interested in a review about animated family film about a panda bear becoming a kung fu master, but hey, to those people, I say that you should at least drop your prejudice againsts family films for, well, a Pixar film.
Ol' Jackie boy was right, the metal will strike you down with a vicious blow. Seriously, I was just waiting for that big climactic sequence in which Po just busts out a sitar from out of nowhere and vanquishes Ian McShane's Tai Lung character with the Ancient Chinsese Rock.
Thomas Jacob Black, because when he's not doing or at least faking some pretty cool stuff, he's a soft-spoken, but still kind of annoying nerd. No, I don't simply mean that he's playing the character that he always does, I mean that we're looking at a cartoon panda version of Mr. Vocally, most of the performers fit their roles like gloves, but really, when you look at who they usually play, you never would have guessed most of the people behind these voices, and I only bring that up because, while most of these voice actors are so far out of their comfort zone it's ridiculous, Jack Black is playing Jack Black.
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