by Allan M. Heller

Created on: November 16, 2009

Jack Black and his esteemed co-stars breathe life into Dreamworks Animation's 2008 animated feature Kung Fu Panda, which pits the porky protagonist against a vengeful adversary with lethal skills in martial arts. Po the panda lackadaisically waits tables in his father's restaurant, dispensing bowls of noodles with as much enthusiasm as a prisoner marking off the days on the wall of this cell. Po's father, Mr. Ping (James Hong), cannot imagine his son's wanting to do anything else, but the hopeful panda has grand ambitions of being a kung fu master. When the rogue fighter Tai Lung (Ian McShane) escapes from a remote mountain prison, Po just might get his chance when he is unexpectedly and inexplicably chosen as the legendary Dragon Warrior. But will he be ready?

In this movie, the denizens of China's Valley of Peace are all animals. The grand master is a geriatric tortoise named Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), whose second in command is a diminutive red panda named Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). Po's father, Mr. Ping, is a duck. The so-called Furious Five, who marginally assist in Po's training, are simply Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Viper (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen) and Crane (David Cross). They demonstrate how their unique physiognomy perfectly matches their individual styles of kung fu. Much of the humor is physical, and watching a human being pummeled and paddled while undergoing the rigors of martial arts training just would not be funny as seeing the same happen to a pudgy panda. At the same time, the audience knows that while Po may be smarting from his ordeal, no serious harm will come to him. But as his showdown with the vicious Tai Lung approaches, viewers may question this assumption.

This latter point brings up the film's PG rating. Tai Lung, a snow leopard who embodies all of a predator's speed and ferocity, is one scary character. Especially bewildering is the lightning dispatch with which he escapes from his confinement, foiling the 1,000 armed rhinoceros guards surrounding him. That and a couple of slightly risqu references assure that Kung Fu Panda does not get slapped with the dreaded G designation.

Shifu bears more than a coincidental resemblance to Yoda from the Star Wars films. Both are physically puny characters who do not look like they could harm a fly, but each is devastating in his own right -one a kung fu master, the other a Jedi master. Although Shifu lacks the funny voice and strange grammatical constructions of Yoda,

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