Guest Author - Peggy Maddox
One of three films nominated for Best Animated Feature this year, Kung Fu Panda (2008) has made millions of dollars and garnered numerous positive reviews, but I think it fails as a children's movie.
First, what's good about it
1. The art work is exquisite. The artists and animators have reproduced the beauty of Chinese art: painted dragons, misty mountain tops, waterscapes and swirling flower petals.
2. The voices suit the anthropomorphic animal characters:
Po Ping (Jack Black), a slovenly, gluttonous giant panda; inexplicably the son of a goose
Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), an ancient tortoise; very wise
Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), a humorless red panda who teaches advanced kung fu (I thought he was a mouse.)
Tai Lung (Ian McShane), a snow leopard adopted by Shifu and brought up to be a master of kung fu. When Oogway refuses to honor the leopard with the scroll of the Dragon Warrior, Tai Lung turns renegade. Oogway subdues him with magic and places him in perpetual imprisonment.
Shifu has five gifted students called the Furious Five:
Tigress (Angelina Jolie), a South China tiger, a stickler for tradition and the rules
Monkey (Jackie Chan), a Golden Monkey (like the one in The Golden Compass)
Mantis (Seth Rogen), a Chinese praying mantis, the smallest of the Five
Viper (Lucy Liu), a green tree viper
Crane (David Cross), a red-crowned crane
Mr. Ping (James Hong), a Chinese goose, Po's father. His dream is for his son to follow him in the noodle-making business. How the goose acquired a panda son is never explained.
What's negative about It
I don't like the violence and I don't like the moral.
Yes, the purpose of any movie is entertainment, but movies for children have a responsibility to show virtue and effort rewarded.
Kung Fu Panda perpetuates the myth that anyone can succeed at anything if only he believes strongly enough.
I've seen first-hand the effect that this dangerous, destructive myth can have on children. I had a young man in my high school French class who never participated in class, never did the assigned homework, and, not surprisingly, failed every test he attempted. When I suggested that he find another course to replace French for the following semester, he told me he needed the foreign language credit. He thought that he could obtain it merely by attending class as an observer.
I had another student, a young woman. She was pretty and personable, but her academic skills were nearly non-existent. She rarely turned in homework. Her grade average was a D, not just in French, but in her other courses as well. When a visiting career counsellor asked her what she planned to do, she replied firmly that she planned to go to Harvard and become a criminal lawyer.
Children should be encouraged to pursue their dreams, but they should not be deceived as to what behaviors are needed to achieve success. "Believing in oneself" without effort is not enough.
The hero of Kung Fu Panda is a bumbling glutton who suffers shortness of breath. He has some positive qualities: he respects his father; he is loyal to his friends; he possesses tenacity. What he lacks is self-discipline. Although he completes a little training with Shifu, (with food as his reward), he does not achieve the physical fitness necessary to practice the martial arts to a high level of mastery. He never achieves the state of self-knowledge that would lead him to alter his unhealthy eating habits. His last words in the film are about food, and at the very end of the credits he is shown requesting food from Shifu because his own bowl is already empty.
According to a recent study, 66 percent of Americans are overweight; 33 percent are morbidly obese, that is, they are at least 100 pounds overweight. That's 1 in 50. That's deadly serious.
Children don't need an obese hero who achieves victory by bouncing the villain off his belly.
By all means, give Kung Fu Panda an award for art and animation, but save the best animated screenplay Oscar for Wall-E.
