Kung Fu Panda

Fast, outlandish and wonderfully zany, Kung Fu Panda is a wacky trip to a Chinese Wonderland.

It entertains with consummate skill and aims to please without (pardon the pun) pandering. The latest computer-animated feature from DreamWorks pushes the envelope of quality as ambitiously as its Pixar rivals.

All of the voice casting is perfect. Black, who has portrayed his fair share of slackers over the years, provides a voice that is a perfect match for the reluctant hero.

This animated romp is ablaze in color, action and personable characters, thanks to endearing performances by vocal talents Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman.

For whatever reason, the film riffs happily on the kung fu movies that entered America's consciousness about eight years ago -- and, truth to tell, it's more complicated than some.

Everything about Kung Fu Panda is a little better, a little sharper, a little funnier than the animated run of the mill. It's one of the few comedies of 2008 in any style or genre that knows what it's doing.

When it's not delighting us with CGI visions and lush 2D animation, it's treating characters with tender affection.

Kung Fu Panda is a thrilling, funny, charming and inspiring animation triumph that brings out the hero in all of us.

Kung Fu Panda is a surprise in the best sense, because it works its formulaic premise into an adorably zippy bundle of wry fanboy humor and gymnastically imagined combat.

Kung Fu Panda isn't on the menu at your favorite Chinese restaurant -- let's hope -- but it's probably one of the top movies your kids want you to take them to see this summer. Indulge them. You'll find it a treat yourself.

Prepare for awesomeness. A kung fu-crazed panda is at the heart of what is, surprisingly, one of the best family films of 2008.

The last time anybody so adeptly mixed martial-arts action and comedy was during Jackie Chan's mid-'90s peak.

This might be my favorite movie of 2008 so far. That's how much fun I had watching Jack Black pull off the role of a large, lazy panda who may be destined for greatness if he can just believe in himself.

The film's whiplash comic timing leaves little time for any thought except "Wow."

Black taps a quality that isn't so visible when he pops his eyes with mock ferocity on screen. He gives Po a slightly abashed suburban-couch-potato sweetness.

The animation is first-rate, and the settings and background are appropriately exotic. The fights are a lot more exciting than you would think.

A more traditional story line with traditional music and what has become -- for better or for worse -- traditional 3-D animation.

This is a kung fu movie for the Guitar Hero Generation.

The animation is consistently sporty and there are some choice comic riffs on martial arts movies.

As directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, the kung fu scenes overflow with crisp, thrilling and funny moments that whiz by in the 88-minute run time.

Thanks to its thrillingly kinetic and expertly choreographed action sequences, this Hollywood toon feels more like a vintage Yuen Woo-ping flick than Shrek The Third.

The strength of this film is its visual presentation. The characters are well designed and they move with the necessary precision and grace.

DreamWorks scores its best animated entry since the first Shrek film with Panda, a fun, lighthearted, thrilling pageant of chops, kicks and "ki-yahs" that kids will love and adults will savor.

If you like kung fu movies, you're in for a treat. All the standards are here -- high-flying fight scenes, mid-fight freeze frames, and the wisdom of mysterious masters.

A gift in a summer that threatens to be seriously short of quality kid entertainment.

As one might expect from the title, the movie is full of exaggerated chop-socky action sequences, and most of them are clever and entertaining.

Kung Fu Panda is a story that almost tells itself in its title.

It's a goofy and mostly good-natured comedy, even though it is a little violent for a kids' movie.

The succinctly named Kung Fu Panda delivers exactly what its title promises: Lots of kung-fu and lots of panda.

The phrase "animated Jack Black" seems redundant, but it is the key to the success of Kung Fu Panda in a number of ways.

This is well-worn territory, from the cuddly slapstick to the Chinese wisdom, but the movie redeems itself with some surprisingly smart and tender moments.

Beholden to treasured cinematic legacies and a culture shared by over a billion people, Kung Fu Panda deftly dodges a minefield of potential disappointments and emerges victorious.

Kung Fu Panda is poppin' with fortune-cookie kernels, such as this one, offered to Po, the title character: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift - that's why it's called the present."

The animation is beautiful, from the ethereal Sacred Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom to the elegant Jade Palace and its Moon Pool.

Kung Fu Panda returns the animated art form to something that's not always present: gobs of unabashed, fun-loving entertainment.

Kung Fu Panda is about a lot more than kung fu, and it's also more than a place for Black to unleash his over-the-top zaniness.

Yes, it essentially follows the broad outline of a rags-to-riches children's movie, but it wakes up the formula with imaginative scenes, lively and likable characters, genuinely funny moments and animation that's detailed and beautiful to behold.

This is a film with some set pieces and backdrops that linger in the imagination long after the film.

Panda is less reminiscent of the computer-animated films of recent years than of a newly discovered Disney film that was made 50 years ago, and that is a thing of beauty.

It’s blessedly free of cheap pop-culture gags -- if only someone had resisted the urge to recycle Carl Douglas’ 1974 novelty hit Kung Fu Fighting for the umpteenth time.

True to its title, the feature cartoon Kung Fu Panda is an improbable combination of cute-animal comedy and martial-arts farce with a saggy middle and an overall cuddly kapow.

Kung Fu Panda will be a hit with the preteen crowd, obviously, but the film's simplicity should also make it fun for all the accompanying adults.

The filmmakers have taken a creaky plot and a lot of cliches and given them a fresh coat of paint.

The movie's early moments are flat and predictable, and even 30 minutes in, you may find yourself ready to curl up in your seat for a long summer's nap.

Kung Fu Panda manages to entertain and dazzle, and parents won't beat themselves up for sitting through it, although what it teaches could fit on a fortune cookie.

It never devolves into the smart-ass pop-culture referencing that has become commonplace in our post-Shrek age despite some genuinely sly vocal work from its assembled A-listers.

Kung Fu Panda is prototypical non-Pixar animated product as we've come to expect it: a lushly beautiful, even soulful, visual experience yoked to a pro forma story line that wouldn't fool a 3-year-old.

Kung Fu Panda is one gorgeous movie. If only the story and comedy were half as absorbing.

Would it be too much to ask for a cinematic cease-fire when it comes to martial arts movies?

Black is right at home voicing the adolescently hyperactive and insecure Po, in large part because the boisterous panda is really a big, furry eight-year-old version of himself.

Kung Fu Panda is very much a Hollywood production -- formulaic, made for marketing and never quite as inspired as it could have been.

Koalas, tigers and panda bears, oh my! That's about the only novelty to be found in this pretty, innocuous, animated flick that's got some fine chop-socky but a story that might as well have come from the toy-marketing department.

No criticism by me will matter one bit to the thousands of kids who will make up this movie’s howling, lunch-box-buying fan base

As visually impressive as it is resolutely boring, Kung Fu Panda reminds us what happens when a team of state-of-the-art technicians go to work in service of a story that's sorely lacking in soul.

Yet another DreamWorks animation effort that further widens the already expansive quality gap between the studio and industry leaders Pixar.

This computer-animated romp, aimed squarely at kids, gets the job done, I suppose, making an adequate cinematic baby sitter for cranky kids destined to adore its broad slapstick and roly-poly panda hero.

First-time directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne give the feature a stylish Asian look, but never muster enough adult humor to entertain moms and dads as well as young moviegoers.

Though occasionally visually inventive, Kung Fu Panda is a disappointment when it comes to matters of simple black and white: the script.