Po(Jack Black) is a Panda who dreams to become a kung fu warrior, and fight alongside the Furious Five. In the mountain where the Furious Five train the time has come for the all knowing Master Oogway(Randall Duk Kim) to choose who is to become the legendary Dragon Warrior and will keep the valley safe from all dangers, including the dark former student Tai Lung(Ian McShane). Po rushes to get a glimpse of his favourite kung fu masters (the Furious Five) when he is mysteriously choosen, by what seems accident, to be the Dragon Warrior. He is to be trained by Master Shifu(Dustin Hoffman) in order to become this figure, and so the journey begins.

This movie sports some serious good pints on the surface; it has some great voice talent from Dustin Hoffman and David Cross to Jack Black, it has a great visual style, and it definitely has the potential to be a good kung fu comedy. However, it fails to become that overall awesome kid friendly kung fu comedy due to some of the finer points. Firstly I think casting Seth Rogen was a mistake. Seth Rogen provides the voice for Mantis, and I don’t think that he did very well, in the fact that he sounds exactly like he does in “Knocked Up” and “Superbad” and I think the character could have been so much better with some real unique acting behind it. Overall I think the casting wasn’t that good, since most of the characters just sounded wrong to me. With the exception of Master Oogway, Master Shifu, Monkey(Jackie Chan) and Po; the voice acting for those characters were solid.

The direction was pretty damn good. Meaning that the movie accomplished exactly what it wanted, gave you a pretty simple plot and the kung fu action was pretty fast flowing and fun to watch. The final fight scene was slightly disappointing at beginning, but by half way through it picks up and it gets interesting which more or less saves it for me.

The most impressive part of this movie has to be the animation. It makes the movie feel so fun to watch. Like no matter how horrible the story or the acting is you can just mute the movie (or stick a few cotton balls in your ears in the theatre) and still enjoy the movie. Watching some of the action sequences were just so fun based on the pacing of the action (thank you Mark Osborne and John Stevenson) and the visual style. The art style definitely added a lot to the slapstick humour of the movie.

Overall, the movie is okay. It definitely is bearable if you have to take your kids, and doesn’t fall completely flat at any point in the movie. I think the funniest moments for me, were:

1. that Dustin Hoffman’s character’s name is Master Shifu, and anyone who watches a decent amount of Kung Fu movies will know that Shifu is Cantonese or Mandarin (can’t remember which one) for Master.

2. and at one point late in the movie, some child was shouting “Skidosh!!!” like he was Jack Black, which I found hilarious…

IMDB says 8.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 86%

I say 7.0/10