I will admit I went into the movie Kung Fu Panda with very low expectations. I only really went because a friend wanted to and I had already seen all the other new releases. The previews were too vague for me to even have the slightest clue what was about to happen, save that it would involve some sort of ninja panda. Thus I was very suprised to find the movie highly amusing.

The plot follows the events in the life of a panda named Po in the Valley of Peace. He is an obese panda who works in a noodle shop and dreams of being a Kung Fu master. Dread comes into this fateful city in the form of the powerful and treacherous snow leopard Tai Lung. A contest is held to discover who is the Dragon Warrior of prophecy that will face and defeat Tai Lung. Among the animals vying for the title are Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey, all great warriors trained by Master Shifu. The best candidate was to be decided by the turtle temple master and he shocked everyone and picked... you guessed it.

This movie is above all a vehicle for Jack Black to provide his enthusiastic, charismatic brand of comedy. Even though it is animated I think this movie provides him with his best material since School of Rock. His flawed character gives room for a lot of external humor as well. His laziness and tendency to dream are well noted. His girth is made fun of lightly (more by visual stunts than comments) and in the end there is even a moral given to the value of being yourself.

I am used to movies like this where you have twenty celebrity voices competing for screen time, which can often be overwhelming. In this movie Jack Black gets about eighty percent of the lines and that allows you to get attached to one character instead of dividing your attention between so many. To me is something that differentiates this movie from others in the celebrity voiced CGI genre like Shrek, Over the Hedge and virtually anything by Dreamworks. Dustin Hoffman also does well as Master Shifu, the second best character by far to Po. There are also exotic guest appearances by the likes of Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan and even Seth Rogen.

Special mention needs to be made concerning the graphics in this CGI movie. Our panda hero's adventures are presented in Cinemascope animation and it is exquisitely rendered. I loved the backgrounds and really felt like I was watching an ancient Chinese city, albeit an animated one.

In essence the plot is an excuse for a series of action sequences

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