Eternals: Superheroes redux

Eternals (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for fantasy violence, brief sexuality and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.05.21 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is getting crowded.

 

Seriously, one wonders why these folks don’t bump into each other.

 

Ikaris (Richard Madden) is unpleasantly surprised to discover that this particularly nasty
Deviant monster seems impervious to his energy blasts.

“Well hello there,” Thor says cheerfully, and he spots Ikaris (more on him in a moment) jetting in the opposite direction. “Whachu up to?”

 

“Got a big, slimy monster to put down, which just emerged in the Arctic,” Ikaris replies.

 

“You, too?” Thor adds, before the other is out of earshot. “What say we compare notes over a few brews, after?”

 

“You’re on!” Ikaris shouts, as he vanishes over the horizon.

 

(Ahem.)

 

As envisioned by comic book luminary Jack Kirby back in 1976, Eternals existed on a cosmological, universe-shaping plain far removed — and quite separate — from everyday superheroes. (Think all-makers such as Odin and Zeus, blended with the arrogant amorality of Thanos and Galactus.)

 

But director Chloé Zhao — a recent double-Oscar winner, for last year’s Nomadland — was tasked with blending the Eternals with the rest of the MCU. The result — co-scripted with Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo and Kaz Firpo — still feels mostly like a stand-alone entity, although passing reference is made to the Avengers.

 

As is typical of so many superhero movies, the first two acts are thoughtful, engaging and character-driven. Zhao has a sensitive touch with inter-personal relations: no doubt the reason she was chosen to helm this ambitious slice of myth-making. And while the climactic third act maintains the emotional angst, it also descends into the usual, bombastic sturm und drang that overstays this film’s 157 minutes.

 

So: Bear with me.

 

For untold millennia, the massive Celestials — picture brooding, blood red, rock-encrusted, six-sunken-eyed beings the size of our moon — have created new civilizations by seeding planets throughout the galaxy. The Celestials “cleanse” a given planet of pesky apex predators, by sending monstrous Deviants to perform this culling; the Deviants then are destroyed by the noble Eternals, who subsequently (but subtly) help “shape” the rise of the dominant bipedal civilization.

 

(Seems a rather complicated way to do what evolution handles on its own, but hey: Who am I to argue with a Celestial?)

 

(There’s also a rather strong echo of the Transformers series’ ongoing war between autobots and decepticons, which diminishes some of this film’s originality.)

 

Those Who Wish Me Dead: Smolders fitfully

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) • View trailer

Three stars. Rated R, for strong violence and considerable profanity

By Derrick Bang

Too soon, too soon.

 

With two horrific fire seasons still fresh in everybody’s memory — and the uneasy potential of a pending third — it’s ill-advised and extremely tasteless to set a survival thriller against the backdrop of deliberately torched forest land.

 

Hannah (Angelina Jolie) and Connor (Finn Little) discover, to their horror, that the most
direct route to town — and safety — has been blocked by an expanding forest fire.

Particularly one as sloppy as Those Who Wish Me Dead, available via HBO Max and movie theaters.

I’m not sure who to blame. Director Taylor Sheridan gave us 2017’s terrific Wind River — which he also wrote — but he’s also the prime mover behind television’s mean-spirited and unrelentingly trashy Yellowstone. 

 

This new film’s primary flaw is its impressively inept screenplay, adapted from Michael Koryta’s well-received 2014 novel. Sheridan co-scripted this adaptation — along with Charles Leavittt and Koryta — so they collectively are at fault.

 

It’s other flaws notwithstanding, this is yet another recent film — following Minari and Together Together — that stops before properly concluding. I can’t figure it out; are these production companies running out of money?

 

In this case, there’s no resolution involving a key villain: ergo, any perceived success our heroes achieve is temporary at best, and therefore pointless. That’s completely unsatisfying … and, I’ll wager, not the way Koryta’s novel ends.

 

It’s also obvious that Koryta’s story has been tweaked and shaped to better showcase the character played by star Angelina Jolie, undoubtedly at her insistence, as a means of demonstrating that she still has bad-ass chops. To her credit, she gets to prove it.

 

She plays Hannah, an elite firefighter — a smokejumper — based amidst a massive swath of Montana forest land. Alas, she’s seriously damaged goods, due a recent fire catastrophe during which she was unable to save three children. Badly traumatized and unable to move beyond her “failure,” she indulges in self-destructive stunts and minor physical mutilation.

 

She spends most of her time in self-imposed isolation, in the solitary confinement of a forest watchtower high above verdant greenery below.

 

Hannah has friends, who care about her deeply: Ethan (Jon Bernthal), a local deputy, who with his wife Allison (Medina Senghore), runs a wilderness survival school.

The One and Only Ivan: A noble hero

The One and Only Ivan (2020) • View trailer 

3.5 stars. Rated PG, for mild dramatic intensity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.4.20 

Break out the Kleenex; you’ll be snuffling before this gentle little fable concludes its first act.

 

Which is not to say that The One and Only Ivan, debuting on Disney+, is an unrelenting tear-jerker; far from it. But by replicating the “gimmick” from Katherine Applegate’s Newbery Medal-winning 2012 children’s novel — in which the title character, a silverback gorilla, narrates his own story — scripter Mike White puts us squarely into this intelligent creature’s heart and soul.

 

Under the watchful eye of Bob, a stray dog and best bud, Ivan reluctantly
agrees to baby elephant Ruby's request that he tell her a story.

I’ve not been a fan of the increasingly convincing CGI talking animals in recent Disney films — particularly when they burst into song — because their speaking ability destroys the otherwise astonishing accuracy with which such critters are created. But it works here, because it is essential that we understand what motivates this saga’s star: what he imagines and yearns for, and how he reacts to the environment, people and other animals in his orbit.

 

Right from the start, it’s easy to embrace the fact that we’re sharing Ivan’s thoughts … which was, of course, the point of Applegate’s book. Considerable credit also goes to Sam Rockwell, who voices Ivan so sensitively; and director Thea Sharrock, who plays us like a fiddle. Let us not forget that Sharrock helmed 2016’s Me Before You, which had folks sobbing in the aisles.

 

Needless to say, this film — as was the case with Applegate’s book — also is a quietly powerful statement in our ongoing reassessment of wild animals in captivity. Indeed, the fact that this story is set in a circus, of sorts, feels uncomfortable. But it’s a period piece, faithful to the 1980s setting; more to the point, Sharrock and White don’t preach. 

 

Viewers have no trouble drawing the proper conclusions.

 

Events take place at the Exit 8 Big Top Shopping Mall and Video Arcade, which for years has boasted a “little top” circus. (Filming took place in Lakeland, Fla., although the script deliberately avoids specificity; this could be any indoor mall, in any city or state.) Ivan, the 400-lb. star, is joined by Stella (voiced by Angelina Jolie), an aging African elephant, and a small assortment of other critters.

 

The tiny circus was founded years earlier by Mack (Bryan Cranston), as a means to accommodate and earn a living with Ivan, who was rescued as a baby but quickly outgrew his initial suburban home. The two have long shared a special relationship.

 

In the tradition of such stories, Ivan, Stella and the other animals converse avidly with each other, but never with humans. It’s a testament to both Cranston and CGI wizardry, that we recognize the Mack/Ivan bond via silent expressions, forehead touches and other tiny — but powerful — shared gestures.

 

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil — Maladroit

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rated PG, despite considerable violence and heartbreaking content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.18.19

Wow. Genocide, in a (supposedly) family-friendly Disney fantasy?

What’s next? Gang rape? Child mutilation?

Uncle Walt must be spinning in his grave.

En route to a lavish dinner designed to acquaint Maleficent (Angelina Jolie, center) with
her future in-laws, Aurora (Elle Fanning) and Diaval (Sam Riley) can't help thinking that
this might be a very, very bad idea.

What were these people thinking?

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a tasteless, mean-spirited, Frankenstein’s monster of a movie: a textbook example of what happens when art is sacrificed on the altar of crass corporate commercialism. It follows 2014’s Maleficent, Disney’s response to Wicked, the stage play with its then-novel origin story of Dorothy Gale’s Wicked Witch of the West. Maleficent, in turn, was the origin story of the evil sorceress who bedeviled Aurora (aka Briar Rose) in Sleeping Beauty.

Which was a reasonable concept, the first time. But scripters Linda Woolverton, Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster have broken faith with the original fairy tale here — indeed, the entire genre — by blending cutesy-poo creatures with horrific violence, in service of a thoroughly unsubtle refrain of “We’ve got to overlook our differences, in order to get along.”

Real-world resonance notwithstanding, that lecture is getting very tiresome.

On top of which, the writers have blatantly borrowed (read: stolen) concepts from all manner of other, far superior fantasy sagas. The result is kitchen-sink overkill, as if dazzling us with a cornucopia of cheerful, colorful beasties will compensate for a story that becomes increasingly grim, depressing and sadistic.

And this is supposed to be for children? The PG rating is reprehensible, and a total lie. Disney should be ashamed.

Perhaps recognizing the folly of the entire production, most of the featured performers don’t bother acting. Angelina Jolie’s line readings are atrocious. Her Maleficent, intended to be intimidating, never rises above the smirking insolence of a star who recognizes that she’s wasting her time (and ours). Elle Fanning goes too far in the other direction; her Aurora is breathlessly melodramatic, her eyes forever wide with overwrought angst.

Harris Dickinson’s Prince Philip is no more than a stalwart hunk; his wooden insincerity is laughably inept. And the three actresses playing the colorful good fairies — transformed here into pixies dubbed Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), Flittle (Lesley Manville) and Thistlewit (Juno Temple) — are just plain annoying.

Given that most of these actors have done superior work elsewhere, director Joachim Rønning deserves the blame for their poor performances here. He has no feeling for this material, having previously helmed only grim historical sagas — Max Manus: Man of War and Kon-Tiki — and 2017’s ill-advised Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, a similar big-budget franchise flop.

Kung Fu Panda 3: Still kicking up lots of fun

Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, and needlessly, for mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang

For a franchise that began with a one-joke premise — a roly-poly panda, as a kung fu master? — this series has shown remarkable resilience.

Once Po, left, meets his equally mischievous biological father, the two pandas embark on
a spirited "play date" that almost destroys the venerable jade palace.

Considerable credit obviously goes to scripters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who’ve been on board since 2008’s first film. They’ve nailed just the right blend of goofy physical comedy and witty dialog (gotta keep the adults entertained!) while including a virtuous moral or two.

The voice talent also is first-rate, starting with the always amusing Jack Black, as the frequently flustered title character; ample assistance comes from supporting players performed by Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen and particularly James Hong. They and others have remained involved from the beginning, and such continuity definitely helps the franchise.

Mostly, though, these films are fun, in the silly, good-natured manner that also has kept the Ice Age series running strong for so long.

As Kung Fu Panda 3 opens, our hero Po’s beloved teacher, Shifu (Hoffman), decides to step down as the local kung fu master. On his way out, Shifu assigns Po the next challenge in his evolution as the local Dragon Warrior: to become the instructor of his warrior colleagues, the Furious Five: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Chan), Mantis (Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Crane (David Cross).

The first training session ... leaves much to be desired.

Recriminations and self-doubt are cut short, however, by the arrival of an unexpected visitor: another dumpling-devouring panda, named Li (Bryan Cranston), who bears a striking resemblance to Po ... and claims to be our hero’s actual father. This doesn’t sit well with Mr. Ping (Hong), the goose who runs the village noodle shop and has been Po’s adoptive father, lo these many years.

Unbroken: A bit underwhelming

Unbroken (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence, brutality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.26.14

Depicting the human spirit’s strength and indomitable resolve can be a tough sell in the visual realm of the big screen, because so much of that ability is an inward, fundamentally mental challenge.

Dismayed to have come to the direct attention of sadistic concentration camp guard
Mutsuhiro Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara, right), Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell)
is subjected to a series of increasingly brutal and humiliating ordeals.

And yet we’ve been blessed, this month, by two powerful films that convey precisely that heroic struggle: the first one devoted to a quiet academic who refused to yield — Stephen Hawking, in The Theory of Everything — and now the equally authentic saga of a scrappy athlete driven by equal measures of grit and stubborn fury.

As with Eddie Redmayne’s bravura performance in Theory, director Angelina Jolie’s adaptation of author Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken is fueled by equally riveting work from British actor Jack O’Connell, whose until-now obscurity on these shores is certain to vanish forever. O’Connell is the heart, soul and raw guts of this film, and he achieves the near impossible: He genuinely makes us believe that fresh-faced, Southern California-based Italian immigrant Louis Zamperini could have survived — nay, triumphed over — a series of heart-stopping ordeals that clearly would have felled, and killed, lesser men.

Hillenbrand is the meticulous biographer who in 2001 dazzled readers with her first book: Seabiscuit: An American Legend, which went on to become an equally popular 2003 film. Hillenbrand acknowledges that her research into that famed horse frequently uncovered references to another famous Californian who “could give Seabiscuit a run for his money.” That led to an eight-year “chat” with Zamperini, but only by phone; Hillenbrand didn’t want to meet him in the flesh until after her second book was published.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption hit bookstores in 2010, subsequently spending 185 weeks on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list. It was a natural for film adaptation, and therein lay the challenge: how to bring Zamperini’s amazing story to cinema.

Jolie’s smartest move was casting O’Connell in the lead role, and the young actor absolutely rewards her faith. But while Jolie clearly approached this project with both passion and sensitivity, her directorial touch is too remote: We often feel like distant observers, rather than being intimately connected with these men, and their plight.

The Tourist: First-class accommodations

The Tourist (2010) • View trailer for The Tourist
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence, mild sensuality and a hiccup of profanity
By Derrick Bang

Stars Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck – who won a well-deserved Academy Award for 2006’s merely terrific The Lives of Others – and a sharp, cosmopolitan script by von Donnersmarck, Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park, The Young Victoria).

Goodness, how could it miss?

It doesn’t.

Strangers on a train: Elise (Angelina Jolie) surprises Frank (Johnny Depp), a
complete stranger, when she sits across from him during a railway journey to
Venice. Although Frank is convinced she has made an odd mistake, in fact
Elise has chosen her new comparion with care ... and for reasons that are
about to become significantly dangerous.

The Tourist is an engaging throwback to sophisticated 1960s espionage romps that matched stunning women with bemused and often clueless men: deservedly treasured classics such as Charade (Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant) and Arabesque (Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck). Full disclosure forces me to acknowledge this as one of my favorite genres, so I approached The Tourist with high expectations and guarded concern: It ain’t easy to re-capture this sort of lightning in a bottle.

No worries, mate. The storyline is pure bonkers, to be sure, but the execution is a whole lotta fun.

Jolie makes a pluperfect femme fatale, although cut from a different (much more expensive) cloth than the sleeper agent she played in this past summer’s Salt. Her Elise Clifton-Ward is an ethereal sophisticate: the sort of woman accustomed to playing with her toys, particularly those that stand on two legs. Her expression is a heady brew of charming amusement and mildly smug superiority: a smoldering, come-hither glance that promises much but yields little.

At the same time, she’s open to novelty: Any man might have a chance, her gaze suggests, if he intrigues her sufficiently.

Depp, although playing as “ordinary” as we’ve seen him in years – his Frank Tupelo is a mild-mannered American math professor – is captivating in his mundaneness. His timid astonishment – this woman’s paying attention to me? – is pitch perfect, his worried, are-you-putting-me-on sideways glances to die for. And I lament the fate of theater patrons lacking acute hearing, because they’ll miss all of Depp’s nervous grumbles and worried frum-frahs. He can turn a squeaky “Hmmmm?” into the height of hilarity.

We know we’re in good hands right from the get-go, as James Newton Howard’s engaging score draws us into a stakeout of Elise by law enforcement agents in several countries: a long-running operation overseen by British investigator Acheson (Paul Bettany, appropriately brittle).

Salt: Well-seasoned

Salt (2010) • View trailer for Salt
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.29.10
Buy DVD: Salt (Deluxe Unrated Edition) • Buy Blu-Ray: Salt (Deluxe Unrated Edition) [Blu-ray]


Tom Cruise abandoned Salt during pre-production a few years ago, apparently in favor of Knight and Day.

Well, the joke's on him; Salt has all the suspenseful pep(per) that Cruise's incomprehensible summer vehicle lacked, not to mention a leading lady who knows how to sell this sort of popcorn action fare.

Although she's about to be late for a dinner date, Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie)
agrees to perform a snap assessment of a walk-in Russian defector claiming to
have good intel. Her boss, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber, left), appreciates the
favor; the less generous Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the resident counter-
intelligence officer, figures such work is part of her job. Alas, Salt is about
to regret her compliance, when the defector's information cites her personally.

Indeed, pouty Angelina Jolie could turn this fast-paced thriller into a franchise, if she so desired; Phillip Noyce's slickly choreographed directorial control and Kurt Wimmer's twisty, engaging script give the actress ample opportunity to blossom in this femme fatale response to the "Bourne" series.

Yep, the action scenes have that sort of rugged, well edited pizzazz, starting with a stylish early chase scene that's every bit as breathtaking as Warren Beatty's frantic efforts to evade the bad guys at the end of 1972's $ (Dollars).

Better still, you won't be annoyed by Wimmer's screenplay, which opens with a clever premise, puts its resourceful leading lady into unexpected peril and then plays with us during the game-changing second and third acts. Espionage fans will be reminded of 1987's No Way Out, which is good company to keep.

Jolie stars as CIA operative Evelyn Salt, introduced while being tortured in a North Korean cell by interrogators convinced that she's a spy. (They're right, of course.)

Although resigned to her fate, Salt is surprised one day to be part of a prisoner exchange that restores her to American soil and the arms of her devoted lover, Mike (August Diehl), a mild-mannered spider researcher who kicked up such a public fuss that the CIA had no choice but to retrieve her, in order to shut him up.

Time passes. Evelyn and Mike marry, and she adjusts to the challenges of domestic bliss and CIA desk duty: no more field work, thank you very much. She demonstrates a talent for interrogation analysis, which one day prompts her boss and longtime friend Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) to have her spot-check a newly arrived Russian defector.

Changeling: Factual horror story

Changeling (2008) • View trailer for Changeling
4.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, profanity and profound dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.6.08
Buy DVD: Changeling • Buy Blu-Ray: Changeling [Blu-ray]

A single mother's 9-year-old son disappears; she frantically summons the police for help. Months pass, and finally a miracle: The boy has been found halfway across the country. But when the lad is brought back to California for the anticipated heartwarming reunion, the distraught mother knows immediately that a mistake has been made. This isn't her son.

Led to believe that the Los Angeles police have recovered her missing son,
Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is chagrined to discover that the boy clasped
by Capt. J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) isn't her son ... but her disappointment
turns to incredulous horror when Jones and the rest of his colleagues refuse to
admit their mistake, and insist that she must be wrong.

A tragic but understandable case of mistaken identity, right? The boy will be reprimanded for posing as somebody he isn't, and the police will resume their hunt for the woman's son.

Well ... no.

Not when the setting was 1928 Los Angeles, where the city police department under the rule of Chief James E. "Two Guns" Davis was as violent, corrupt and unrepentent as the Prohibition-era mobsters it had been designed to eradicate. What this meant to Christine Collins, after her son went missing, translated into a Kafka-esque nightmare that only grew worse — much, much worse — as days turned into weeks turned into months.

Director Clint Eastwood's Changeling, meticulously based on actual events by debut feature screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, is at once fascinating and utterly beyond belief: a sequence of events that'd never fly in fiction, because they simply wouldn't pass the credulity test. No system of authority — certainly not in the United States, let alone the progressive state of California, less than 100 years ago — could be so unethical or so wantonly, viciously cruel.

No 20th century American woman could have been subjected to so heinous an ordeal.

No mother could have remained so resolute, in the face of such treatment.

No hero should have fallen into such obscurity, not even a century later.

Frankly, I don't understand why statues dedicated to Christine Collins aren't dotting the Los Angeles landscape, or why feminists haven't done a better job of heralding her (wholly unintentional) contribution to the cause of woman's rights. She deserves to be a teaching point in every contemporary history class.

(In the interest of maximizing your response to this film, you really should stop reading now, and save the rest until after you've seen the picture. I simply can't discuss it without citing relevant details that are best experienced without warning.)

Wanted: Not so much

Wanted (2008) • View trailer for Wanted
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity and relentless violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.26.08
Buy DVD: Wanted • Buy Blu-Ray: Wanted [Blu-ray]

The good news: As hoped, coupling Timur Bekmambetov's adrenalin-fueled, hyper-stylized flourishes with a reasonably linear script results in a movie that's somewhat more approachable than the Russian director's absurdly over-praised Night Watch and its sequel, Day Watch.

While Fox (Angelina Jolie) watches impassively, Wesley (James McAvoy, left)
accepts a pistol from The Gunsmith (Common) and tries to believe — to really,
truly believe — that he can make bullets "bend" around obstructing objects
after having been fired.

The bad news: Wanted ain't that much better.

Fans of The Matrix and its mystical, too-cool-for-the-room characters probably will devour this stuff and nonsense, and fairness demands that I acknowledge having found portions of Wanted amusing and occasionally clever. But the physics- defying CGI stuntwork and perpetual gunplay become tiresome, as do Bekmambetov's crazy-quilt visuals.

This guy makes movies for people who find MTV's smash-cut editing a bit too leisurely.

The other potential problem concerns the fact that screenwriters Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan have screwed around with the plotline as presented in the Mark Millar/J.G. Jones graphic novel on which this film is based, and not to the property's improvement. Arrogant scripters who insist on leaving their own leaden footprints do so at their own risk: Chances are, the original writer(s) did just fine on their own, thank you very much.

And by so drastically mutating the character dynamic, Brandt & Co. have completely compromised our ability to identify with some (all? none?) of the players in this highly warped fantasy.

The result, therefore, is more comic book than the original comic book. Bekmambetov does pretty well with sheer momentum — he's particularly adept at that — but the vehicle sputters and eventually sinks beneath the weight of its own metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.

None of which can be blamed on the cast members, who give it their all. Star James McAvoy, in particular, holds things together far longer than the film deserves; he's a perfect nebbish who blossoms into a fully credible reluctant assassin.

Angelina Jolie is similarly ideal as one of McAvoy's mysterious mentors; she has the smirky, amused superiority that this film desperately needs ... a sense that she knows this is all over-revved nonsense, but she's game for a good time, and we should do no less.

And, for awhile, the invitation is tantalizing.

McAvoy stars as Wesley, a cubicle-dwelling drone who pushes papers in some insignificant office, where he's harassed on a regular basis by a tyrannical boss (Lorna Scott, wonderfully dreadful) who throws her considerable weight about while terrorizing everybody under her command. Wes gets little relief at home, where his skanky girlfriend seizes every opportunity to do the nasty with our hero's office mate and supposed best friend.

Wes' life, in short, is an unrelenting nightmare of brow-beaten insignificance.

Kung Fu Panda: Panda-monium

Kung Fu Panda (2008) • View trailer for Kung Fu Panda
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG, and quite pointlessly, for harmless martial-arts mayhem
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.6.08
Buy DVD: Kung Fu Panda • Buy Blu-Ray: Kung Fu Panda (Two Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

The concept is too silly for words, which is precisely the point.

You can't even glance at Po, the corpulent hero of Kung Fu Panda, without laughing.

Shifu (right), the kung fu master, can't imagine how he could ever transform the
corpulent Po into a martial-arts fighting machine ... until an epiphany strikes:
The oversized panda will do anything for food ... and that includes fighting
with impressive skill.

In lesser hands, this film might have gone no further than childish farce. But credit a stable of writers — Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris, Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger — for a script that cleverly blends ancient Chinese tradition with American geek culture, and credit directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne for maintaining a snappy pace. (So nice to see a film that gets on the stage, tells its story in an economical 92 minutes, and then gets off.)

Mostly, though, this film owes its success to its gorgeous animation and sublime voice acting.

I mean, really: Dustin Hoffman as Shifu, an itty-bitty critter that happens to be a kung fu master?

The only thing funnier than that is the notion that Oogway, Shifu's master — and the apparent inventor of kung fu — is an ancient, slow-moving tortoise.

Hoffman is notorious for his adherence to "method"; I fondly recall Laurence Olivier's comment, during the filming of Marathon Man, when Hoffman prepared for a particular scene — one that called for his character to look whipped because he hadn't slept for days — by actually not sleeping for two days.

"My dear boy," Olivier is reported to have said, "why don't you just try acting?"

I can't imagine what Hoffman might have done to prepare for this role, but the effort clearly paid off. More crucially, the animators give Shifu's face a wealth of expressions that perfectly match Hoffman's palpable intensity. That all this should emerge in so diminutive a character ... well, that's just icing on the cake.

(Actually, trying to determine Shifu's species is surprisingly difficult in a film where all the other creatures are so easy to identify. He looks like a tiny cross between a possum and a raccoon. Hoffman has claimed, during interviews, that he's "a rare small red panda." Which I guess makes sense.)

The setting is ancient China, more or less, although the country is occupied not by people, but by animals. Ordinary citizens are the more vulnerable forest and barnyard creatures: bunnies, pigs and various birds. Po, the only panda in sight, sticks out like a sore thumb ... all the more because he seems to have been "adopted," at some point in the distant past, by his fussy father, a goose named Mr. Ping (James Hong).

Dad's sole hope in life is that his son will embrace the family calling and become a famous noodle chef.