3:10 To Yuma, James Mangold, Film Review: Cinephilia

Synopsis: In China's Valley of Peace, Po the Panda (Jack Black) spends his time daydreaming about being a martial arts hero when he's not working for his father, making and serving noodle soup. Meanwhile, at a nearby temple, the head monk, Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), has had a vision that Tia Lung (Ian McShane) will escape from prison and ravage the Valley in his quest for power. To stop him, Oogway must chose the one who deserves to become the Dragon Warrior. Guess who he chooses.

Kung Fu Panda is the most recent in a series of diminishing returns from DreamWorks that stretches back through Bee Movie, Shrek 3, Madagascar, Shark Tale, Shrek 2 and the enormously successful, Shrek. It is violent and noisy in the Spielbergian tradition of juvenile action entertainment, evidently churned out for the fish-in-a-barrel school holiday market, eminently dull and immediately forgettable. There, I’ve got that out of the way.

Am I being too hard? Perhaps a tad, it is, after all, a cartoon, but the main problem with Kung Fu Panda is that we, adults AND children, have seen it all before – the only thing that is noticeably different is the array of talking critters - the zero-to-hero storyline, the typology of characters, the animation, is interchangeable with any of the previous films mentioned. That sameness, and the seemingly endless hyperbolic violence, make it a deadening experience. Bereft of grace, gentleness or any quality we would associate with childhood (unless your children were overweight and suffered from chronic Attention Deficit Disorder…which perhaps reflects its American demographic), Kung Fu Panda is like a Roadrunner cartoon blown up a hundred times by a cohort of anonymous animators, packaged with a supposedly feel-good story and palmed off with a bloated Hans Zimmer orchestral score.

Is there anything good to be said about the film? Well, the opening sequence is quite effective… and the film only lasts 90 minutes….hmmmm, that’s about it, folks. For some (myself included, I confess), the name of Jack Black will be a drawcard but, other than fatness, the resemblance between Po and Mr Black is passing. Po is disappointingly bland. In fact most of the characters are. I’ve never understood what is the need to have expensive, A-list actors voicing these animations but perhaps Dustin Hoffman brings some quality to Master Shifu, about the only character with any individuality. As for Angelina Jolie’s Tigress? Surely the girl on reception could have done just as good a job and for a lot fewer benjamins.

And as for the moral of the story, “there is no secret ingredient”, well, it has the glibness of a self-help dictum or New Age mantra. Whether it will have any meaning to a pre-teen audience, bombarded as they are by the relentless action, is another matter. Instead of taking a punt, get outdoors, some fresh air, see some real animals. You'll be doing yourself and your kids a favour.

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