If it’s very, very hot and everything else you want to see at the Pavilion is sold out, go with Kung Fu Panda. I saw it last night with Diaper Diva, Ducky and OSFO and we loved it. Even if we had to sit in the front row of the tiny theater on the top that has a bunch of messed up chairs no one can sit on.
Jack Black is the voice of Po, the Panda. Dustin Hoffman is the voice of the Master Shifu. Even Manhola Dargis at the New York Times’ enjoyed the film not expecting to.
Visually, this animated film from Dreamworks is actually quite gorgeous. Here’s Dargis in her New York Times review:
That outsider is even more irresistible when nestled amid so much lovingly created animation, both computer generated and hand drawn. The main story, executed via 3-D animation (all done on computers) and directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, fluidly integrates gorgeous, impressionistic flourishes with the kind of hyper-real details one has come to expect from computer-generated imagery: photorealistically textured stone steps, for instance, and fur so invitingly tactile you want to run your fingers through it. One of the pleasures of “Kung Fu Panda” is that instead of trying to mimic the entirety of the world as it exists, it uses the touch of the real. The character designs may be anatomically correct, but they’re cartoons from whisker to tail
We call that blasted little theatre ‘the attic’! We’ve taken to calling the Pavilion box office and not going if that’s where the movie is showing; once we got in there and there was no A/C. (I demanded a refund and got one.) Wonder if my 13-y-old feisty one would dig Panda? Jack Black would probably sell it for her.