Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda is, overall, a hilarious movie to watch. While it's not the funniest comedy around, it does have an overall good plot and some funny jokes in it. Here's the breakdown:

(SPOILER ALERT)

So, there's these 5 animal guys called the Furious Five, which are kung fu-y type people- Tigress, Crane, Snake (or Viper), Crane, and Mantis (who's teeny-weeny). So these guys, trained by a turtle (or tortise?) Oogway and the turtle's assistant, a little koala type looking thing named Shifu, need to protect their village from the snow leopard Tai Lung, who is going to escape from his prison. (Oogway has a vision that it's going to happen.) So Oogway has this bright idea to hold a tournament to choose the Dragon Warrior, who is worthy enough to read the never-before-read dragon scroll, which is supposed to give secrets leading to super powers (or something).

Meanwhile, Po, a giant panda, son of a noodle maker (who happens to be a duck?) and food-aholic, wants to go see the tournament. He pushes his noodle cart to the Palace, but he can't get into the tournament to watch. He's desparate for a way in so he uses a rocket (firecracker/ fireworks) to fling himself in...and apparently Oogway points right where panda-man landed, which means that Po is the new Dragon Warrior.

So now Shifu has to teach Po, and he thinks Po is pretty useless...but Po's really nice to everyone (good noodle cooker) and everyone likes him except for Tigress.

So anyhow, Tai Lung escapes from his prison, and goes straight for the valley where the Dragon Scroll is held (he wants to read it and get super powerful). All the while, Shifu finally realizes the way to get Po to trian is to not let him eat until he is trained. Po finally gets kung fu and is now a kung fu master ninja.

The Five go and fight Tai Lung on a bridge. It's a really good fight scene, actually; if I could, I'd watch it again and again. Very dramatic. But either way, Tai Lung gets the better of all 5 of them with his Nerve Strike (or something like that) which paralyzes the enemy.

But Shifu is still excited because he goes ahead and makes Po the Dragon Warrior. Po takes and reads the Dragon Scroll...which is blank- and Po gets no super power. So Po and Shifu and all the other 5 are like, "Okay, now what?" so Shifu decides that he will stay and fight Tai Lung while Po and the other 5 go and get all the villagers out.

While escorting the villagers out, Po meets his dad (who happens to be a crane--a crane gives birth to a panda?) and from his dad, he realizes that "there is no secret ingredient" and that the Dragon Warrior is just himself, nothing added. So Po rushes back to the temple to help Shifu.

Meanwhile Shifu is getting pounded, killed, annihilated by Tai Lung. It's a massacre. Then Po takes over and then Po and Tai Lung fight each other...long story short, Po wins because he is so fat that the Nerve Strike doesn't affect him, and he masters a Finger Hold, which pretty much obliterates Tai Lung.

And they live happily ever after. (Yeah, pretty much.)

So now that we have that, let's break it down into...

The Good:
  • Very funny. Very dramatic, very logical. No weird jumps, no weird characters. Perfect for the family or just when you're bored.

The Bad:
  • It's actually not that bad. There are, unfortuantly, significantly less jokes than I thought there would be, but it's still funny.

The Ugly:
  • None. Very clean- no adult themes, no bad language, just un-dry (wet?) humor.

Well, yeah. The GBU wasn't as long as it usually is, but there's not much to say. Again, Kung Fu Panda is a video perfect for the family, filled with fun, action, and laughs.

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