

While your parents didn't flinch hearing you scream-sing “Grease Lighting” (with lines like “the chicks'll cream”), Mom-you might have a very different reaction to Danny Zuko's racy lyrics. Now that you're a parent, though, you might realize upon rewatching these classics that they aren't quite as tame as you remember them. Let's start with a question: Did you watch movies like Beaches and Grease when you were young without a second thought? You probably liked the friendships, the fantasy, and, yeah, the music. You get to relive the glory years of your youth, and your kids get a glimpse into how rad your childhood really was.īut first, a caveat - a conversation, if you will.

#Kung fu panda 1 video movie
Watching '80s family movies on movie night could even become your family's favorite new tradition. And isn’t it about time you share those movies with your kids? At the very least, it may help them to appreciate all of your pro-level movie references. But who can blame Gen X'ers and Gen Y'ers? Memorable one-liners fill the movies made during those formative decades. Nostalgic movie-speak is a fluency for those born in the '70s or '80s. The animation is clean and vivid: Backgrounds and sets are appreciative tributes to Chinese landscape art and architecture the fighting style of each animal, whether a snake, a tiger or a monkey, is subtly rendered and the filmmakers have clearly studied the best Asian martial arts films to spark inspiration for those gravity-defying stunts.Ĭast: Jack Black (Po), Dustin Hoffman (Shifu), Angelina Jolie (Tigress), Jackie Chan (Monkey), Lucy Liu (Viper), Ian McShane (Tai Lung), David Cross (Crane), Seth Rogen (Mantis), Michael Clarke Duncan (Commander Vachir), James Hong (Mr.Anyone else still yell "Sweep the leg!" at wildly inappropriate moments in your life? If you watched The Karate Kid growing up, you probably do. A battle along a rope bridge between the Furious Five and Tai Lung and Po’s showdown with his adversary dominate the final third of the film after the mostly comic run-up to those battles. Whatever points the script by Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger want to make to children about pursuing goals, it does so quickly and gets back to the fights. Like most chop-socky movies, “KF Panda” strays not at all from its twin goals of action and comedy. He is soon ready to face the villainous Tai Lung (Ian McShane), a snow leopard who descends on the fearful village to exact revenge his own rejection as the Dragon Warrior. He miraculously fulfills this impossible dream when the inventor of kung fu, Oogway the turtle (Randall Duk Kim), anoints him the long-prophesied Dragon Warrior.Ĭomic calamities pile on top of one another until Shifu recognizes Po’s true driving force - his insatiable appetite.Ī bun or a cookie snatched from his grasp has Po performing feats of remarkable agility and no little ferocity. Ping (James Hong) - that discrepancy is never clarified - runs a noodle shop and expects his son to follow in his web steps.īut Po longs to train under Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and alongside his heroes, the Furious Five: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Viper (Lucy Liu), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Crane (David Cross) and Monkey (is that Jackie Chan).


He does not start with a lot of promise, only a boundless enthusiasm for the discipline and a seeming inability to perform its simplest tasks. Sweet looking, perhaps a bit clumsy, seemingly unflappable, what could be an odder hero for a kung fu movie? Transforming a panda named Po - voiced by big, lovable Jack Black - into a kung fu fighter to save a threatened village in ancient times is essentially the entire movie. The stroke of genius is, of course, the film’s hero - the big, lovable bear that is the Chinese panda. Events of the Week: 'Top Gun: Maverick,' 'Doctor Strange' and More
