Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

So far, the summer of 2008 has been pleasant. Not mind-boggling, not “best ever,” and not ONE! GREAT! PERFECT! CLASSIC! AFTER! ANOTHER! But then again, how often do you get a summer like that? Instead, it’s been a summer of character. Say what you will about the big movies that have been opening weekend after weekend since the start of May, but love them or hate them, they’ve been big swings, big attempts, movies that aren’t doing things by half-measures. SPEED RACER was ambitious as could be, even if it didn’t connect with some viewers and others refused to even give it a try. IRON MAN works because it’s got attitude to spare. SEX & THE CITY didn’t even try to reach out to new audiences, instead focusing on giving its fans exactly what they wanted. INDIANA JONES seems to be giving fans the shits because of all the things it isn’t just as much as for what it is. And then, last weekend, two more films entered the fray and both of them would be impossible to mistake for anything else.

What makes KUNG-FU PANDA such a welcome surprise is the way the idea itself seems to be just as forgettable and cookie-cutter as most of what DreamWorks Animation has become known for. It’s a stealth hit. I don’t like saying that... I’ve loved the idea of successful alternatives to Disney ever since we started seeing new animation studios pop up, and I respect just how hard it is to find a place in the market and be able to produce good work in enough volume to keep your artists working and growing. Pixar’s obviously perfected that model, but you’ve got other places that are chugging along, doing their best from film to film, hitting and missing to varying degrees. With DreamWorks, I think the success of SHREK was in some ways the worst thing that could have happened for them, because for a while, they became determined to make themselves into the smart-assy pop-culture joke factory studio, where the animation seemed incidental. There was nothing about their films that particularly demanded to be animated. They were animated by default, not by design. The SHREK sequels. SHARK’S TALE. The MADAGASCAR films. They’re not movies so much as release dates. It’s frustrating to see a studio with the obvious artistic resources of DreamWorks turn out these movies that just don’t resonate.

That’s why it’s so nice to see them make something like KUNG-FU PANDA, a film that doesn’t make a single pop culture reference during its entire running time. It’s so nice to be engaged by a DreamWorks film on such a personal level, and to be rewarded so richly for the time spent with it. This is the single most beautiful film the studio has released, with a visual design that seems like a fever dream that is equal parts Shaw Brothers and Zhang Yimou. And on such a lush visual playground, what unfolds is a sweet, direct fable that is funny without pandering (no pun intended), with most of its humor rooted firmly in character instead of more obvious jokes. This is a movie that loves kung-fu, where the very premise is designed to help teach children some of the fundamental ideas of Eastern philosophy and martial arts training. I don’t think a movie has been this honestly in love with kung-fu since SHAOLIN SOCCER.

Casting Jack Black seems on the surface to be the exact sort of choice that makes most of the DreamWorks films feel so fake... chasing big names instead of just casting the right actor for the role. Except... in this case... they did cast the right actor for the role, because Black ends up doing some of his most vulnerable and likeable work as Po, a character that is a very recognizable archetype, the bumbler who manages to somehow turn his natural inclinations into strengths. Equally strong is Dustin Hoffman as Master Shifu, the tiny red panda kung-fu wizard who must transform Po into the Dragon Warrior according to prophecy. He’s got some dark secrets he’s dealing with when he crosses paths with Po, and he’s none too pleased to have this lost cause forced upon him.

And as crazy as it sounds, all of this is played absolutely straight. This is not a wacky crazy funny animal movie. There’s a far more subtle artistry than I expected at work here. Directors Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, along with writers Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger and than Reiff & Cyrus Voris, have managed that difficult feat of taking this fleet of creative voices and focusing them into one particular vision, and in this case, it’s so affectionate and confident and sweet and fun. Amazingly, the action sequences are actually exhilarating, a feat that not many CGI animated films have pulled off.

Exhausting, maybe, because of the visual overload, but giving you the same invested exhilaration that a great live-action sequence involving real stunts and real peril? That’s not something many filmmakers can pull off. Here, it’s obvious that the filmmakers are fans of kung-fu in general and they know why the best scenes in the best films work. You can’t just throw random fighting at an audience and expect them to engage; you need to establish stakes, impossible odds to overcome, geography, and exactly who is standing between a character and his goal. If you do that right, then the sequence becomes dramatic AND kinetic, which is the goal. There’s a scene in the middle of KUNG-FU PANDA in which we meet Tai Lung (voiced by Ian McShane), the bad guy of the film. It’s not enough to know he’s scary... instead, they introduce him by first introducing the prison that was built specifically to hold one prisoner... him. We see the thousand guards they have just for him. We see that the prison was built a mile deep in the earth, with only one way in, and we get a tour of just how the entire place works, and how tightly they’ve got Tai Lung locked down. And the whole time, of course we know that he’s going to escape... but the question is how. By the time that sequence is finished, Tai Lung has been established as a truly unstoppable foe and we’ve got a real sense of how he thinks as a fighter. It would be dazzling in any action film, but the charge that comes from encountering a scene like this in a place you don’t expect it is a bonus.

I think the Furious Five, the heroes who Shifu originally trained to fight Tai Lung, are underwritten and underused in the film, but that seems to be a result of running time more than anything. David Cross (Crane), Jackie Chan (Monkey), Seth Rogen (Mantis), Angelina Jolie (Tigress), and Lucy Liu (Viper) all do what they were asked to do, but there’s not a lot of meat on any of those roles. They each have a scene or two to make an impression, but for the most part, they take a backseat to the relationship between Po and Master Shifu. Of all the supporting characters, I think Master Oogway (voiced by Randall Duk Kim, best known to most film fans as The Keymaker in THE MATRIX RELOADED) is the one I like the most, the one who emerges as the most complete personality and presence. He’s Shifu’s master, the creator of kung-fu, and he’s the voice for most of the film’s most centered philosophy. Beautifully written and played, Oogway grounds the film and connects it to something larger.

The art design of the movie is breathtaking, and seeing this in IMAX is a wonderful way to appreciate just how rich the craftsmanship of the picture is. It’s immersive, so you can get lost in this gorgeous landscape, but it’s also dizzying during some of the biggest action scenes, making you feel like you’re in the middle of it. It’s another great showcase for the IMAX format, and if I had to use one word to sum up the overall impact the presentation had on me -- “Skidoosh.”

See the film. You’ll understand.

I find that I’ve gone back and forth in my feelings about YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN since seeing it. I admire the ambition of the film and the way it signifies a return to the silly Sandler of BILLY MADISON and HAPPY GILMORE and, yes, even LITTLE NICKY. I think it’s totally insane to try to tell a story about the struggle for peace between Israel and Palestine that is this broad and ridiculous, but then another part of me feels like maybe that’s the only way you can deal with it right now. Sandler’s back to doing a broad, crazy-voiced character here, a real detour from the more realistic and even dramatic work he’s been doing in films like REIGN OVER ME or SPANGLISH, where even if I have mixed feelings on the movie, I like the work he’s been doing. I think different directors get radically different work out of him, and that’s something that suggests to me that he’s a real collaborator... someone who likes different teams for different things. Happy Madison’s become a brand name at this point. And that’s a dangerous thing. Some people would look at the films they produce, like STRANGE WILDERNESS or GRANDMA’S BOY or DEUCE BIGALOW or DICKIE ROBERTS and call it a disaster of a slate, and other people might look at hits like ANGER MANAGEMENT and 50 FIRST DATES and CLICK and say the company was doing their job perfectly. I always personally lament the fact that National Lampoon didn’t get their shit together as a film production company back in the late ‘70s when they had this sort of opportunity. Even after the monster success of NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE, they were unable to turn that bullpen -- John Hughes, Michael O’Donaghue, P.J. O’Rourke, the incomparable Doug Kenney, Henry Beard, Tony Hendra, Gahan Wilson, Vaughn Bode, Shary Flenniken... I mean, my god, can you imagine a TROTS & BONNIE animated film?! -- into a real ongoing place for people to create fresh and interesting film comedy.

The point is, there was a time where those funny people had a smash hit movie and they made pretty much every wrong choice about how to turn that hit into a production company. Sandler and his friends figured out what they were doing with HAPPY GILMORE and BILLY MADISON, and they turned it into a place where they can make movies they think are funny for the right price, and they can consistently make enough money to keep making all the little weird movies they want to make. Ad infitum. You have to respect that. I laugh at something in almost every one of their movies, but there are very few of them that make me laugh from start to finish. Overall, I think Sandler makes loose and sloppy movies, and ZOHAN is a loose and sloppy film. Dennis Dugan’s a guy who I think understands Sandler better than any other director. He’s the guy who made HAPPY GILMORE, the movie that made sense of the potential of BILLY MADISON. When Sandler was looking to really nail down the warm-and-fuzzy market, Dugan directed the shameless BIG DADDY, a movie that made my wife fall in love with Sandler. And she’s exactly the crossover audience that looks at something like MADISON and recoils. I think Dugan came in to mop up a decade of development shitstorm on I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK & LARRY, and it’s hard to blame that one on any one person. With ZOHAN, I think Dugan has gone back to the cartoon reality silliness of HAPPY GILMORE, and the film’s better for it. I think the set-up of the film is so ridiculous that when the film does try to settle into even vaguely serious territory, it’s impossible to survive that tonal shift. And it wants to be sweet and silly but also vulgar and coarse. It sort of surprised me to realize that a major subplot in the film is about Adam Sandler fucking old ladies. His big fake penis is a co-star in the movie that almost deserves an on-screen credit, something that’s surprising in a PG-13 film. The entire film can be summed up in quick little descriptions of the various ingredients. John Turturro once again touches down from his home planet just long enough to let his freak flag fly real hard, then kung-fu fights some fire and returns to the mothership. Rob Schneider almost works. Dave Matthews doesn’t. At all. Emmanuelle Chriqui is ridiculously hot. Lanie Kazan is not. Nick Swardson plays his one note as well as anyone could. Michael Buffer cannot act, and he’s no Bob Barker, either. Overall... ZOHAN doesn’t really work for me, all of those ingredients failing to congeal into any sort of satisfying whole.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles