MOVIE REVIEW: Kung Fu Panda (PG)
*** stars out of 5

Entertaining, fight scenes a bit long.

Having grown up in a household of dad and brothers watching every Jackie Chan movie ever made and a few David Carradine Kung Fu movies thrown in for good measure, I really wasn't going in with high expectations but I figured it couldn't be that bad. And it was at the cheap movie theater to boot so what the heck?

I think the word for it is chortling. Not quite a chuckle but one of those short deep laughs...that what I did with this movie from the very beginning.

Jack Black plays a panda who dreams of being a Kung Fu Fighter however he's stuck in his dad's noodle shop. (I just don't really understand why his dad is a bird but I leap to the assumption that perhaps the panda is adopted? Should a person really be required to think THIS hard in a cartoon?)

In due time he is selected as the Master Kingdom fighter and here's where the movie got a little long winded for me. It was cute and clever in some ways (even in a sort of reminiscent Karate Kid sort of way as Po learns to Kung Fu fight) but really they could have cut some of the fight scenes down a tad and maybe developed the side characters of the tiger, mantis, viper and monkey. They really didn't say much and I think they could have done a better job with that - otherwise it just seemed like a "hero" without really a worthy sidekick. I just wonder what Jackie Chan was thinking when he signed up for this?

I agree with other reviewers - this movie is a little scary for a cartoon. The villian is scary and I really didn't appreciate the whole prison and prison guard scene (and neither did a few little kids sitting in the theater with us.) It does have a pretty good message I guess ultimately I was entertained and even a bit amazed that I actually liked a Jack Black movie (he's not exactly high on my "must see" actor lists.)