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Moriarty Trades Belated Blows With KUNG-FU PANDA IMAX And YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN!
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
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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Of course that's like saying herpes isn't as bad as AIDS... so...
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I personally LOVED Zohan... It was much better than those Reference Movies.
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But I like what they put out. As long as the Well of Lost Sandler Voices doesn't dry up, I'd be happy.
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"Didn't connect with 'some' audiences and others refused to give it a try"
That sounds quite defensive. It bombed with MOST audiences and others just saw the trailers ADD style and decided it wasn't for them. After seeing the finished product that mindset was quite justifiable. For all the reviews saying 'it had heart with its family message', and for it's hyper-kinetic visuals it was ironically trite and just bland
Anyway Mori I'm liking the sound across the reviews of Kung-Fu Panda of it's not pop-culture referencing winking style so glad you like it and I intend to give it a whirl.
Your lucky I normally like your pieces though, as the words "Rob Schneider almost works" should never be uttered by mortal tongue.
Rob Schneider is...A CARROT. Derp. -
I didn't (wouldn't) watch the whole thing, but I couldn't stand most of the scenes that I saw.I never liked the cartoon, so maybe that's why I didn't want to see over two hours worth of shit I didn't care about in the first place. But, for me the scene with the chimp and the kid green-screened with Free Bird playing in the B/G just made me want to slit me eyeballs... or just look away.I also didn't have any positive feelings for Narnia 2, but Panda does have some entertaining scenes, mostly for the choice of voice talent (I could swear I heard the evil-bad-guy from Big Trouble in Little China).
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yeah...james hong was Po's dad...the duck...awesome fun in both KUNG FU PANDA and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA. long live lo pan!!!
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Awful movie. Even by DVD standards. There were, maybe, three or four funny bits in the whole movie and most of them were in the first 10 minutes of the film.
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I saw that in the theaters on Saturday and was underwhelmed. I had really high expectations for it, and I remember Massawyrm saying it was as good as The Incredibles. It's not. It's not even as good as Finding Nemo. It's probably on par with Cars, if anything. Though, to be fair, the fight scene over the dumpling was hysterical.
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Right. As in, it ISN'T a good or even decent movie. At all.
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supposedly good kids movies and hated most of them. Spiderwick was about as over rated as you can get. But kung fu panda was actually damn pretty good. The way they showed the villain was just a kid who was pushed too hard by his parent for for a meaningless "trophy" was excellent and probably made a lot of parents think while watching it.
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When I heard that he was going to be the bad animal in this movie that seemed like most things with Seth Rogen and David Cross earning a paycheck was going to be meh? I got excited because I thought that was a pretty good voice casting. Then I saw the Polar Express Compass and saw that someone beat them to the punch. The Polar Compass is probably the worst movie I'd seen since The Da Vinci Code, but McShanes scene made it one of the best moives I've seen recently. Hopefully Panda will be good, but I am still real iffy. Zohan was funny. I think the reason why Sandler is still around and Chevey Chase is not is because Sandler seems like a very down to earth guy. Just like Kimmel compared to the guy thats not Norm Macdonald (thought I have not seen the Hammer). Sandler and Kimmel are the type of guys who yes know they are funny, don't come off as I am gods gift to comedy. They realize that they both laugh at silly stupid things but for the most part want to have fun and entertain people. While people like Chase think that they are funny and you should be lucky that he exsits (not so much anymore, but back in the day). Plus Sandler and Kimmel are a lot smarter then we probably realize, and they probably don't fall into the typical stardom traps of blowing all your money on crap. Now if only Sandler can find a movie to star Spade and Norm thats actually funny and keep Schnider FAR away from it. I've meet Schnider before and he is roughly 3 feet tall, with a cowboy hat on.
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It was his bush. That joke got a smile out of me, and I chuckled a few times, but overall disappointing. Kung Fu Panda was awesome...we saw it twice!
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And thus, he is canonized into movie history forever.
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Thinking about taking my 4 yr old daughter this weekend...I'll go alone if I must but I want your take on the scare factor...What do you think?
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Why does he insist on making so many of his characters someone who can fight? It's pathetic.
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in the same sitting. Got to Panda, which I read like 6 months ago on here was going to be AWESOME. It was putting me to sleep (Aside from the prison break scene) so I went to see Sandler, which blew so much ass I had to leave that too. What a waste of $16 (1 ticket plus food)
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Wow the douche bag community community must be popping their collars and throwing their flip flops in the air for that one.
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saw it last night. Id say its safe for a four year old, I mean theres no blood or demons or anything or "gotcha!" moments.
I thought Kung fu panda was going to be like incredibles, but its not. Its purely a kids movie. But its a good one. and it does have its moments for sure. I can spoil it but theres one part at the end I was laughing about the whole way home. But, I say again...its a kids movie for sure, and works mainly on that level, although its messages work for all ages. Hey, I like kids movies ok? -
i finally got to see it. well i can guess i can understand people not liking it or not wanting to go see it, but it is disappointing because i loved it. it's like they taylor-made a film just for me. But while i was there i picked up advanced tickets for kung fu panda, i'm liking what i'm hearing about this so i hope it doesn't disappoint.
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Harry's gut instinct, something to do with size perhaps? Thankfully Moriarty explains WHY a film is working. Kung Fu Panda sounds outstanding.
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Has the best voice in the world. Better than (dare I? Dare! Dare!), I daresay, Morgan Freeman. His work in Kung Fu Panda was stellar; the menace he injects into his voice also goes a long way to selling his formidability as a foe...now if only he'd used the word "cocksucker" a few hundred times this would have been one for the ages!
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Visuals and voice acting were great. The animation and cinematography/choregraphy were awesome. But that is all frills. I had some really high hopes, like "Incredible" hopes. And I was let down.
I really thought that Jolie et al (the F5) were kind of wasted on this. The characters werent fleshed out at all and this could be a running time factor. Overall I thought the voice casting was awesome - Ian could have the best voice from across the pond since Connery. He plays angry as about as good as anybody. I really expected it to be alot funnier. I mean alot. Rogan/Black/Cross are freakin rib splitting IRL and that didnt come across as much as I had hoped.
IMHO - Great visuals but too short and not funny enough.
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I just saw "Zohan" yesterday after finding myself with a half a day off and a wife that could care less about this latest Sander outing, I went to see it myself.
The reviews are mostly right. The film is all over the place with jokes, and the tone of the film. But I would not say it's bad. It's a comedy, and comedy, at it's core has only one responsibility...be funny. I laughed more than I didn't. I actually thought Rob Schnider worked for his role. There were some great gags some good one-liners. To me it was what it was. Was the movie better than working the rest of the day?...it sure was. When the movie was over and as I told others about it, I found myself laughing at the scenerios I was describing to be very enjoyable, especially when Sander gets the job at the salon, and any scene with John Turturro. maybe not woth $12, but surly the $8 I paid. -
It left such a bad taste that I needed a quart of mouthwash and a week to wash it out. Easily, the worst movie I have seen in a year.
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It's just too bad all the stupid jokes and innuendo really screwed up an original and somewhat entertaining storyline. I just can't help but think how much better this movie could have been with more creative writers. The Waterboy proves that Sandler is capable of really funny stuff that does not need to resort to dick and fart jokes.
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