Kung Fu Panda

This is just a film that clicked with me. While I initially wondered why I liked it back then, upon revisiting it, I realized my enjoyment was justified. It's a lovely animated tribute to kung fu films, made excellent by its 3D execution, allowing the creators to play and explore creatively. The animals as kung fu heroes come to life brilliantly, and the story is pleasantly B-movie-esque, clichéd, and unoriginal. (03/25/2015)

An animated film that surprised and entertained me beyond my expectations. Although it is just one among many similar films of this kind, Kung Fu Panda still has something to offer. The story is quite simple with not particularly fast-paced animation, but with great choreography of fight scenes. In short, an American animated film that made me laugh despite its shortcomings. (09/11/2010)

But yeah, after the disappointment of Ratatouille, I was quite pleased with Kung Fu Panda. In the beginning it seems like a perfectly overblown genre homage, with the best jokes coming out of that ("No, this scroll cannot see eyes other than yours... give it here", or blowing out candles), only later it's replaced by humor like "panda is unable to walk up the long stairs for the seventh time" and constant infantile jokes when the main character falls somewhere or does some other inanity. Fortunately there is a lot of good action (except the last wtf fight) and the dumpling fight in particular was good, so as an animated one-shot I enjoyed it. (11/24/2009)

Kung fu Panda is quite deceptive. It comes across as a "different" cartoon that benefits from a decent setting, charismatic voices, and excellent (!) action scenes. However, on the climb up the final stairs, the story gradually runs out of steam enough to just wheeze out a few moral lessons, and the viewer realizes that DreamWorks has actually just reworked the first Shrek model, without pop culture references and with more winking at children. That’s too bad because they could have shaken hands with Pixar with that awesome animation. (10/26/2008)

Kung Fu Panda is beautifully made. Not pretty or nice, but really beautiful. And I don't just mean the animation. I was struck especially by the great color stylization of each scene and their design in general. Together with Zimmer's music, all of this made for an almost magical experience, if it weren't for... The story. It's just plain ordinary. Po is likely to become a hero, although no one around him, not even himself, expects it. So I was hoping for a lot of jokes, but Panda is not exactly full of them. Fortunately, though, there are likable characters (I liked the master dubbed by Dustin Hoffman much better than the main character) and briskly and humorously filmed fight scenes (the battle "for the dumpling" leads the way). Three and a half stars. And I just decided to round them up. Just because. (05/05/2010)