Kung Fu Panda (movie)

Kung Fu Panda
by James Harper

After seeing Kung Fu Panda you might jump to the conclusion that every film should have two directors (and two fairly new directors at that). Kung Fu Panda is almost the perfect family movie. Not only is the movie funny, but the action sequences are exciting. The movie is short and sweet. There is enough here to hold the interest of young and old alike. This is an excellent movie, well worth seeing, one of the stronger movies I have seen all year, animated or otherwise, though Kung Fu Panda is not particularly deep in anyway.

I have seen Kung Fu Panda twice, once in the IMAX version and once in a regular theater (AMC). I strongly recommend that if the IMAX version is near your vicinity, to cough up the extra dough and see it there. In the IMAX version this is a beautiful film, everything is in sharp focus, and there is always something going on to catch your eye. If you are under the impression that seeing a movie at home and seeing a movie at the theater are the same thing, you are wrong (depends on the theater to some degree though). There is no experience quite like being in a full theater watching a movie with good sound and in sharp focus. By contrast, when I went to see Kung Fu Panda at the local AMC, the film was never in sharp focus, which is a very common problem, and not at all a rare occurrence. It was very annoying. If the movie chains want you to care about the movies, then they need to care about the movies and how they are presented. I once sat through a whole reel where the movie frame bar was in the middle of the screen. They need to teach their projectionist to focus their projectors, and they need to have the sound systems up and running in full surround sound (another very common problem). One thing odd about Kung Fu Panda was that in both theaters, the surround sound seemed to be on, but did not make any kind of impact in the movie. I am not sure if it just wasn't there, or the movie wasn't being projected correctly, if it wasn't used to a huge degree in this particular movie, or if I just missed it. The actual sounds I did hear in Kung Fu Panda were fine though and were well thought out.

Read the full review at UnRatedMagazine.com