Another short review, the story of Kung Fu Panda left my mind about as quickly as I left the theater.
Sure it was fine for a kid’s movie. Cute and funny and action-y enough, with the right “believe in yourself” messages.

Basically it is the story of a panda who wants to be a Kung Fu master, so he trains with this Yoda-type mentor and four other experts to fight off the big bad. Standard training montage, mixed with food porn for fun; stock “we don’t want you here until we warm up to your goofy ways and you earn our respect” team thing, yada yada.

As for plot, there’s this “butterfly flaps its wings in..” chain of events, lots of soul searching, blah blah. Pick a platitude, any platitude.

The voice cast was great: Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, et al. Only other person I wanted to hear was David Carradine, he of the excellent, cheese-ball old series (would have made a nice cameo). The animation was good and at times very pretty.

If you have to see a kid’s movie, and Wall-E is not on your list, it’s worth a try.

Final Snark: new plastic, action figures, product tie-ins and the full marketing blitz.