I’ll be honest. I almost didn’t watch this. A 2008 DreamWorks flick about a panda who does kung fu? I had a six-year-old, a tired wife, and a night where anything other than reruns of The Office felt like a chore. I put it on for the kid on a Sunday morning around eleven. By the time the credits rolled I was, against my will, emotionally invested in a CGI panda holding a bowl of noodles. So let’s not pretend I’m above this movie. I am not. I have rewatched it twice since.
I expected DreamWorks filler. I got the best martial arts film of 2008.
Kung Fu Panda came out the same summer as Iron Man and The Dark Knight. Animated movies did not stand a chance at the discourse. Funny thing is, seventeen years later, nobody is quoting Iron Man at the dinner table in my house. My kids still quote Po. The opening scroll sequence, the dumpling scene, the secret ingredient line, the tofu delivery guy who sees everything, they all stuck. The film was directed by Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, with a screenplay by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, and a budget around $130 million. It opened to mixed reviews and climbed to a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes over the years. So the audience was right from day one. The critics just needed time to catch up.
The plot, because yes, there is a plot underneath the jokes
Po, an oversized panda who works in his father’s noodle shop in the Valley of Peace, dreams of being a kung fu master. The Furious Five, Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey, trained by Master Shifu, are supposed to be the ones defending the valley. The villain is Tai Lung, voiced by Ian McShane with a sneer that should be in a museum. Through a series of absurd accidents Po gets nominated as the Dragon Warrior. Nobody believes he can do it. Master Shifu, voiced by Dustin Hoffman in his best animated role since Megamind, basically tries to teach a couch potato how to run a marathon. Po eventually figures out the secret, which I won’t spoil because if you have not seen it in 17 years, that is a you problem. But the short version is that the film cares about effort, not just talent. That is the whole message. It is also, somehow, not cheesy. I will explain how.
The panda himself: Jack Black, mo-cap, and why the performance works
Jack Black has never been a subtle actor. That is exactly why Po works. His voice is a mix of everyman insecurity and Jim Carrey elasticity. William Shatner’s laugh is in there, Mike Myers is in there, and the animators at DreamWorks layered real body movement on top. Po’s belly jiggling, the way he trips over his own feet, the way he stares at the camera like a dog that just ate the cake, none of it is accidental. By the time the third act rolls around, you have bought into this character so completely that you forget he is a 600-pound animated mammal. The training montage with the peaches is one of the best animated sequences of the 2000s. I will die on this hill. And yes, Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and David Cross are all in the Furious Five, and yes, they do get sidelined, which is the one structural flaw the sequels partially fix.
The animal on screen: how they actually animated a panda
Most animated animals feel like humans in suits. Po does not. The animators studied real pandas, and the result is the way he sits, eats, sleeps, and slumps. He rolls. He leans. He falls asleep mid-sentence. The CGI is almost 18 years old now and it still holds. Compare the fur on Tai Lung versus the feathers on Crane versus the scales on Viper, every texture is different. The Jade Palace sequence, especially the moment Po looks out at the valley and sees the Wuxi finger hold shaped in the landscape, is the kind of shot that reminds you animation can do anything live action cannot. They didn’t need a real panda, and frankly a real panda would have wrecked the set. The decision to use a panda lead, an animal famous for being lazy and eating 40 pounds of bamboo a day, as a martial arts hero is the entire joke. It also works.
The emotional core: yes, I cried, no, you cannot make me
Yann Tiemann, the cinematographer on the live-action reference plate work, and the music team led by Hans Zimmer and John Powell, somehow made a movie about a panda have a Hans Zimmer score. The drums when the Dragon Warrior is announced. The string buildup when Shifu opens up to Po. The moment in the gorge where the Wuxi finger hold is revealed. I cried in front of my kids on a Sunday morning in 2008. I will not apologize. Po doesn’t succeed because he is special. He succeeds because he is willing to be bad at something in public. There is a reason this film has been used in real therapy sessions. I am not making that up.
Best Points, Weaker Points, and Audience Fit
Best: Jack Black’s voice work. The Hans Zimmer score. The animation on the Wuxi finger hold sequence. The peach gag. The pacing. The way the film balances comedy with genuine stakes.
Weaker: The Furious Five are underused. Sifu’s backstory with Tai Lung is hinted at but never paid off properly. A few of the side gags feel like filler. The villain’s motivation is basically “I trained hard and was denied,” which is sympathetic enough that the film has to twist itself to make him a bad guy.
Audience fit: Kids 5 and up. Adults who loved martial arts films. Anyone who has ever felt like the wrong person got picked for the job. If you are a parent watching with a kid, you will enjoy it more than you expect. That is the trap. Do not recommend it casually. Sit down and watch it.
Animal movie review Kung Fu Panda: my verdict
★★★★☆. Yes, a four and a half rounded down. I have rewatched Kung Fu Panda three times across seventeen years and I am still finding new gags I missed. The animation is solid, the cast is stacked, the score is overqualified for the material, and the message lands without being preachy. It is the rare DreamWorks release that respects both children and adults in the same frame. If you want a Kung Fu Panda review that does not overthink it, here is the truth: this is one of the best family-friendly animal movies of the 2000s. I would queue up for a fourth watch this weekend if my wife let me. She does not. I watch it anyway.
Yes. The martial arts sequences are stylized and the violence is slapstick. My six-year-old watched it fine and my nine-year-old watched it twice. The emotional beats are pointed enough to land for adults without scaring small children.
It came out the same summer as Iron Man and The Dark Knight. Family animation did not stand a chance in the discourse. The audience numbers were strong from week one and the Rotten Tomatoes score climbed from a respectable opening to a 95% over the years. Critics simply needed time to catch up with what families already knew.
That talent is overrated and effort is underrated. Po is not gifted. He is willing. The film makes the case that the secret to mastery is not being born great, it is showing up, paying the cost, and refusing to quit. Whether or not you believe that off-screen, it is a useful message to put in front of a kid.
Jack Black as Po, Dustin Hoffman as Master Shifu, Angelina Jolie as Tigress, Ian McShane as Tai Lung, Seth Rogen as Mantis, Lucy Liu as Viper, David Cross as Crane, and Jackie Chan as Monkey. The all-star cast is one of the reasons the film has aged so well.
Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011 is genuinely great, almost as good as the original. Kung Fu Panda 3 in 2016 is hollow. Kung Fu Panda 4 in 2024 is a cash grab. Watch the first two. Skip the rest unless you have small kids and a long flight.
