Kung Fu Panda

Who would’ve guessed a tubby bear with an eating disorder could deliver a bigger kick than Indiana Jones? If I were a kid, on the basis on this summer’s movies I wouldn’t want to be a race car driver, or a rocket scientist, or an archeologist. I’d be wishing I could grow up to be a Panda.

With endless ripples of spring-loaded sight gags and razor-sharp wordplay for all ages, King of the Hill writing partners Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger understand the delicate dynamics of chain-reaction entertainment. Kung Fu Panda generates a magical momentum with that indispensable script component Indy IV sadly lacked: a writer with a sense of humor. (“Jeff Nathanson!” you say. “Speed 2: Cruise Control?” I say.)

This won’t be a standard review though, because I’m not big on plot summaries and cast rundowns. I just feel like riffing on a couple of things that struck me about the movie and open up a topic where everybody else can share their impressions too. Compare and contrast. What works in one movie and why don’t the same rules work in another? Endure a few more paragraphs from me after the cut and then, Let the Pandamonium begin!

Aside from its finely-tuned sense of humor, Panda outclasses his live-action rivals with another key ingredient of summertime fun. The movie is a sensational visual experience, nailing the Rube Goldberg toppling-domino exploits that were once a Spielberg/Indy specialty. More importantly, the wacky stunts in Panda hold together cohesively with their own internal logic, while the strangely stiff set pieces of Crystal Skull fail to sustain much suspense — precisely because they defy all laws of real-world physics.

(Speed Racer lost me for the same reason, and yet I was ok accepting that Iron Man could fly around in the stratosphere with rocket flames firing out of his ass. So go figure. Maybe it takes a certain sort of dramatic gravity in order for me to release my requirement for the other kind.)

How come it’s fair to let Panda bounce off walls and not allow Indy the same elasticity?  Dr Obvious says: Get real. Panda is a cartoon; Indy is merely cartoonish. Beyond that, the action in Kung Fu Panda meshes together gracefully like the gears of a Breitling Chronograph, astonishing us with the gorgeous clockwork complexity of its steampunk-inspired contraptions. Creaky Indy IV clanks from pratfall to pratfall like a knockoff Fossil. (The watch brand; what did you think I meant?)

But enough Indy-bashing. Part IV of the franchise has neatly scooped up its kingdom of cash, and nothing we say can ever take away those millions. Good for them. Panda rules right now, but for how long? With its $60 mil opening and far better entertainment bang for the buck it’ll be interesting to see how the tally adds up at summer’s end. Of course, Wall-E is standing by with his box-office vacuum hose to suck up more bucks than all of them.

(As always, there‚Äôs nothing like seeing a movie on opening weekend. When one of the Rhinoceros guards in Kung Fu Panda blunders and clumsily helps the villain escape at one point, some wise-ass behind us called out, “Armadildo!” When the gloriously evil Tai Lung growled out his orders in the Deadwood intonations of Ian McShane, “Fly back then and tell them: the real Dragon Warrior is coming home,” it took a whole lot of willpower for me to resist adding out loud, “cocksuckers,”¬†Al Swearengen-style. But I restrained myself.)

I’ve read that Panda‚Äôs production designer, Raymond Zibach, wanted to achieve an epic look akin to House of Flying Daggers, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.¬† I’m really not seeing the trademark Mandarin extravagance though. To my eyes the efforts of the design team turned out more retro, reflecting the lower-budget ’70’s style of rough-and-tumble Cantonese directors like Lau Kar Leung — and this style works even better for me.¬†¬† Though there’s undeniable majesty in the visual compositions, the simplicity of the backgrounds and “sets” are striped of all unnecessary detail (no meticulously intricate Ratatouille woodgrain here).

The textures and hand-made shadings evoke not only the traditional clarity of Hanna-Barbera classics, but also successfully echo the heightened stagey artifice of the Hong Kong/Guangdong variants of wuxia. So if you’re searching for clues of stylistic kinship, the ancestry is a closer visual cousin to the subversive action-parody of Steven Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle. It’s the difference between operatic melodrama and slapstick theatrics, but thanks to the Shaolin mastery of the light touch overall tone strikes the perfect note. Outlandish force tempered with sublime balance. In true Drunken Master tradition, Po capitalizes on his own stumbles to turn each accidental catapult to his best advantage.¬† In the process of discovering his own unique strenghts, Po proves he‚Äôs no Pooh.

Chinese art is a realm that places special emphasis on the delicate balance of opposites — and finds a source of wry humor there too — in the same way the comedies of Jacque Tati play off the poised precision of the streamlined sets inhabited by Monsieur Hulot. Like a Tang Dynasty landscape, the symmetry of the scroll-like wide-screen vistas in Kung Fu Panda are matched by a brilliantly balance in the script.

There‚Äôs a specific organic intertwining plot thread that can’t be described here for fear of ruining the discovery for those who haven’t yet seen it. Let’s just say that when these seemingly loose strands are braided together near the end there‚Äôs an element of the plot casually planted early on that gets ignited like a fuse when the need for it arises. The device creates a sensation that mirrors a primary principle of Chinese art: “Spirit Resonance.”¬† (I know, I know. Sorry. And blahditty-blahditty-blah. But trust me.)

One more ramble and I really must go. Scanning back over what I wrote about the elegant simplicity of the background art, maybe I should emphasize that the individuals who populate this stylized world are fully realized 3-D creations.  The fact that their dimensionality stands out in such sharp relief against the more subdued surroundings only enhances our reflection on the nature of great animation. From a nearly imperceptible flutter of Master Shifu’s eyelids, to nuances in body language that speak more clearly than any words, the character animation is more alive than any of the actual living breathing actors in Speed Racer.

Someday, we might try to figure out why 85% of animated films are excellent and 85% of live action films are the opposite of excellent. For now, let’s just revel in the pleasures of the best movie of the summer (at least, as the MTV Movie Awards would say, “so far”).