The ever-excitable Po is thrilled at the news and does everything he can to gain access to the Jade Palace, despite his father's stern warnings about chasing his "silly" dreams, but then chance -- or is it fate? -- intervenes, when Oogway chooses Po himself as the Dragon Warrior, despite the strenuous objections of Master Shifu (who sees little of worth in Po's pudgy form and clumsy mannerisms) and Tigress (who feels the honor of the Dragon Warrior's duties should have been bestowed upon her). Despite the animosity and/or embarrassment the Furious Five members exhibit towards him, Po nevertheless is awed at the possibility of realizing his greatest dream, and honestly tries his best to whip his bamboo gut into fighting shape under Shifu's eye-rolling training. But then Po finds his services as the Dragon Warrior needed in a far more urgent sense...

Seems Shifu's old pupil, the gruff, snarling snow leopard Tai Lung (Deadwood's Ian McShane), has masterminded an escape from his Mongolian, mountaintop prison (in a spectacularly-staged action set piece), and is now on his way to the valley in a bid to take by force what was denied him by Shifu and Oogway years before -- the mantle of the Dragon Warrior and the secrets hidden within the Dragon Scroll. Understandably freaked out, Po tries to shirk his duties as the Dragon Warrior and get the hell out of Dodge, but Shifu digs deep within himself to break through Po's mental and physical handicaps in a last-ditch attempt to get him to help defend the valley against it's greatest threat.

When I first got wind of this project, it struck me as more of the same from the Dreamworks animation sausage factory. Take anthropomorphic animals, add celebrity voices, sprinkle in some bathroom jokes, pop-culture references, song montages and broad slapstick, and market directly at beleaguered parents simply wanting to tune out while their delighted spawn happily slurped down soda and threw popcorn in the hair of the annoyed people a few rows in front of them at the theater. But Kung Fu Panda, while touching on many of the same elements that Dreamworks has been running into the ground over the past few years with mediocre efforts like Over The Hedge and the awful Shark Tale, is a surprisingly robust piece of entertainment.

First off, it's remarkable what the film doesn't contain. There's not a single song at any point during the film's running time (aside from the obligatory remix of the ubiquitous "Kung Fu Fighting" over the end credits, but we can let that slide), not one bodily-function reference (no burps, no farts, no shit), not one solitary, overt reference to another movie or TV show...okay, Po does get hit in the nuts at one point ("My tenders...!"), but only once, and for a film that consists largely of characters punching and kicking one another, that's a pretty fucking impressive example of restraint. And by eschewing all of these crutches that have been choking the life out of contemporary animated features ever since Shrek set the snarky, pop-addled template for 'toons nearly a decade ago, Kung Fu Panda achieves something altogether rare in a modern animated feature...a sense of timelessness. One can actually imagine the film playing just as well to audiences -- both children and parents -- twenty, thirty, even fifty years from now as today.

And while -- yes -- the film does stack it's voice cast with recognizable celebs, the creative team has nevertheless assembled a gaggle of talented actors who have had their characters expertly tailored to their particular comedic/dramatic strengths. A little Jack Black generally goes a long way, but as Po, he manages to temper his manic apoplexy with a beguiling sense of wounded pride, an ursine Clark Kent hoping against hope to find the Superman within. Dustin Hoffman brings a wizened dignity to Master Shifu, his tough-love Yoda/Pai Mei exterior hiding a quiet humor and an even quieter sense of melancholy about his "failure" with his traitorous student Tai Lung, who only wanted to live up to his master's teachings and feels an all-too-relatable sting of rejection when he was denied what he so desired to be his own.

Panda is also notable for it's vivid displays of martial arts techniques (choreographed by Dreamworks veteran Rodolphe Guenoden). With CGI, the ability to have no limits whatsoever of the pesky laws of physics often makes it difficult to develop a genuine sense of peril. But Panda is a film brimming over with dazzling displays of kung-foolery, with one particular set piece (the Furious Five battling Tai Lung on a rickety, disintegrating rope bridge spanning a seemingly bottomless gorge) perhaps the best action sequence of 2008, playing like a dizzying blend of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

If Panda has one major failing, it's in the sketchy character development of the members of the Furious Five. Yes, the film's heart lays in the student/master interplay between Po and Shifu, but Jolie's Tigress is the only member of the Five given even a scrap of a back story (always trying to prove her worth to Shifu even though she always felt second-best in his heart to Tai Lung), and the remaining four are given little to do except deliver the occasional quip. Thankfully, this oversight is rectified in the bonus DVD packed with Panda in most DVD outlets, Secrets Of The Furious Five.

In this 24-minute short, Po is given his first teaching assignment, trying to gain the attention of a gaggle of young bunny students who are only interesting in the butt-whupping aspects of kung fu. But Po does his best to fill their impressionable minds with the more inward aspects of the martial arts by using the back stories of the Furious Five as examples. Animated in the same awesomely stylized, 2D manner as Panda's opening and ending title sequences, Furious Five offers vignettes exploring the early days of Mantis (so super-speedy that his impatience at the slow-as-molasses world around him offers a life lesson), Viper (born without fangs, and forced to find a less blunt way to impress her disappointed father), Tigress (an orphan cub whose strength and temper find themselves shaped by Shifu), Crane (a skinny janitor nerd at a prestigious martial arts school who finds his agility an advantage) and Monkey (a mean-spirited prankster who is given a lesson in humility by Master Oogway). No mere throwaway, this is a fine little prologue/epilogue companion piece to Panda, and would make an ideal television series pilot (indeed, a Kung Fu Panda TV series is currently in the works). One wonders why they just didn't do a 2-disc Panda set and add Furious Five to the second disc, but what the hey.

Sweet, irreverent, exciting, and spectacularly-staged and designed, Kung Fu Panda is the best Dreamworks animated feature in a while, and here's hoping they'll continue down the same creative path with their future films. Skadoosh!

Presentation
Presented in 2.35:1 Cinemascope, Kung Fu Panda is one of the most gorgeously-visualized films Dreamworks has ever made, and this razor-sharp anamorphic transfer is up to their typically excellent standards. The colors are lush, edge enhancement is non-existant, and every corner of the frame is filled with one eye-popping sight after another. Reference quality. The 5.1 English audio (with additional 5.1 choices in Spanish and French) offers more of the same, with awesomely deep bass, an enveloping use of the surround speakers, and a rich soundscape for Hans Zimmer and John Powell's superb musical score. Rockin'. Secrets Of The Furious Five collapses the aspect ratio down to a more typical 1.78:1 Dreamworks framing, but otherwise, the transfer is equally as pristine and impressive, and the audio (in English 5.1 and 2.0) offers a similar array of sonic pleasures.

Extras
The most noteworthy extra feature on the Panda disc is the Filmmaker's Commentary, featuring co-directors John Stevenson and Mark Osbourne discussing the complex color schemes they used to accentuate either heroism or dejection in specific scenes, numerous early screenplay drafts, and the myriad technical challenges faces by the production crew. It's a solid, chatty track. The remainder of the extras are relatively surface-level stuff. Meet The Cast (13:14) is EPK stuff showcasing the film's voice actors cracking wise in the recording booth and mugging for the cameras. Pushing Boundaries (7:05) looks at the complicated surface texture work for clothing and fur simulations for the characters, but is too brief to really satisfy. Sound Design (3:52) looks at the foley artists banging and squishing various inanimate objects to create Po's belly wiggles and body blows. Kung Fu Fighting Music Video Featuring Cee-Lo (2:29) is exactly that. Dragon Warrior Training Academy is some kiddie game I didn't even bother with. Food Network Exclusive: Alton Brown At Mr. Ping's Noodle House (4:40) is an impressive display of noodle wrangling. Help Save The Wild Pandas (1:37) is a Jack Black-hosted PSA begging for money to save those cuddly widdle bears. How To Use Chopsticks (2:55) is a children's primer on how to use chopsticks (duh!). A Dreamworks Jukebox offers direct access to songs from various Dreamworks cartoon features. Finally, there's a Previews gallery offering trailers for the very funny-looking Monsters vs. Aliens (2:23), Madagscar 2: Escape 2 Africa (1:50) and the Panda spin-off companion DVD Secrets Of The Furious Five (1:04). Speaking of which, the Five disc offers all crappy kiddie games, including Learn To Draw, Dumpling Shuffle, Learn The Panda Dance, and...oh hell, screw it.

Bottom Line
Charming and sincere, Kung Fu Panda is a "family" movie in the best possible sense of the word, with plenty of slapstick silliness for the kiddies and killer action sequences for the adult viewer. You can happily put this on the shelf next to your favorite Shaw Brothers movie.