Movie & Music

IT'S easy to imagine the pitch that sold Dreamworks on the notion of an animated comedy called Kung Fu Panda. The title says it all. Round, cuddly, slow-moving animal turns into the unlikeliest of heroes by getting hooked on the sharp and pointy disciplines of Chinese martial arts.

Since kung fu movies are reliable crowd-pleasers, all that remained was to join the dots. Yet the idea languished for quite a while before the studio eventually got down to business. The clincher turned out to be the casting of Jack Black, the rotund comic who is now first port of call for any director in search of a star who can deliver geeky loveableness with wisecracks and pratfalls.

While Black was hired only to give voice to the panda, Dreamworks' animators have inevitably been inspired by his body language in coming up with their bumbling hero's particular brand of bounce and bravado.

In publicity for the picture, there has been a lot of talk about maintaining respect for Chinese history and culture. The film's elaborate website features a potted summary of relevant kung fu moves and rituals, and the word "timeless" has been bandied about in describing its story. We're meant to see it as a departure from the Dreamworks house style, which was established seven years ago when Shrek became such a hit by spoofing the Disney breed of animated fairytale. The studio's animation has leaned heavily on jokes about pop culture ever since. In contrast, its rival, Pixar, has taken a less glib approach. For a quick take on their differences in sensibility, compare Dreamworks' Shark Tale with Pixar's Finding Nemo. Dreamworks' aquatic adventure was a Mafia movie with Robert De Niro voicing the shark as an underwater Godfather. In contrast, Pixar came up with a story that echoed the Disney classics Bambi and Pinocchio. Finding Nemo was a story about the complications of parenthood, loss, grief and survival in hostile circumstances. These tough truths were lit with laughter but implicit in the film was the fact that the world is a tricky place and its creatures are endowed with complexities that need to be accommodated if a film is going to take you anywhere you haven't been before.

So when Dreamworks says that it's laying off the parody to give you a story that is "timeless", you're entitled to expect the unexpected.

And the film does look great. Its designers have have taken their cues from Chinese art and architecture, and its directors, John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, have ensured the animation is a delight. Stevenson, who began as a puppeteer with Jim Henson, has since worked for all the major animation companies and Osborne has made innovative short films and music videos. They know how to marry the beauty of hand-drawn images with the scale and impact of CGI.