Word: masterful
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...demonstrated, Po is declared the new kung fu hero. Shifu is aghast: this clown can't be taught anything. Yet Oggway believes that the accident that dropped Po out of the sky was no accident at all. The roly-poly panda is the one chosen to battle the evil master Tin Lung (Ian McShane), who'll be breaking out of prison any moment...
...Enter the Dragon. A boy who watched those movies would be nearing middle age now, but he'd recognize KFP's plot - of a laggard who undergoes rigorous training to become a great fighter - from many films, including the one that made Jackie Chan a star, the 1978 Drunken Master. A kid would also remember that, for all the explosions of melodrama and comedy in these dynamic, dime-a-dozen epics, they were essentially training films in the Shaolin regimen of self-defense...
...animal adorability traded in its dinner jacket for two black eyes? The answer is yes, on the evidence of DreamWorks' latest ani-movie, Kung Fu Panda. Taking as its source the same Hong Kong martial-arts films that inspired Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the new picture provides a master coursed in cunning visual art and ultra-satisfying entertainment...
...made it into the movies' titles. One of teenage Jackie's first lead roles was in Little Tiger of Canton, aka Snake Fist Fighter. In 1978, his breakthrough year, he made Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin and Snake in Eagle's Shadow, and topped them off with Drunken Master, aka Drunken Monkey in the Tiger's Eye, aka Eagle Claw, Snake Fist, Cat's Paw, Part 2. (Hong Kong movies often had a different title for every East Asian country it played in.) As for the Furious Five, they are direct descendants of director Chang Cheh's Five Venoms...
...have an unhealthy fondness for humiliating physical humor - there are more sight gags of fat creatures hurting themselves than in an entire run of Super Bowl commercials. The movie finds its footing once Po stops tripping over things and devotes himself to the exhausting curriculum devised by his master. Shifu's exact species is a matter of some dispute among early reviewers of the film ( Entertainment Weekly describes him as a raccoon, The Seattle Times as a mouse and the McClatchy newspapers as a "tiny red panda"). But no one can debate the power of Hoffman's voice work...