Movie Review: Kung Fu Panda 2

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This is the weekend of the sequels. Early weekend releases The Hangover Part II and Kung Fu Panda 2 join last weekends Pirates of the Caribbean 4. The three movies will be battling it out to determine who will be the king of the long Memorial Day weekend box office. Two of the movies are available in 3D and one of them, Hangover, will rely solely on the ticket revenue from a 2D version.

With a special contest code from M&Ms that awarded me a $3 discount on a ticket I had my ticket money plunked down for the 2D version of Kung Fu Panda 2 instead of using the discount to pay the surcharge for the 3D version.

A little shy of three years ago we met Po (Jack Black) as he went from an overweight, lazy, slacker panda to become the Dragon Warrior and join the elite kung fu fighters of the Furious Five: Tigress, Mantis, Viper, Monkey and Crane (Angelia Jolie, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan and David Cross) under the tutelage of Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman).

Now, the very existence of kung fu is threatened by Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) a pea fowl who has an axe to grind. Well, actually he has a cannon to shoot since he has learned how to use gun powder not for a beautiful display of fireworks but as a weapon for mass destruction and the conquering of China. What stands in way of Lord Shen's desires? According to the Soothsayer (Michelle Yeoh) something that is black and white. Might that be a panda? AND...could that panda be Po?

The battle lines have been drawn and we know that Po and Lord Shen will face off against each other. Po's skills have improved, but if it wasn't for the assistance of the Furious Five, he would have been toast a long time ago. His aligning with the Five is just what he needs to be an effective team player until he discovers a secret which shakes him to his core and rocks his chi. His father, Mr Ping, the goose that makes a delicious noodle soup and one mean, hot, steamed bun is horror of all horrors, not his real father. Insert dramatic duh dah dum....music here. Apparently Mr Ping never had the birds and bees talk with Po for Po to figure out that he didn't come from an egg.

The revelation of adoption and its aftermath is the weakest part of the movie. In movies and TV too many times the characters are shown to loose all self worth and wonder who they are when they discover that their biological parents, usually the mother, felt that someone else could do a better job raising them. Po looses confidence and starts playing mind games with himself questioning the love and care that his father, the goose, Mr Ping has given him since he took Po in as his own. That self doubt interferes with his ability to fight Lord Shen.

Fortunately, the rest of the movie makes up for this short coming. The relationship between Po and Tigress has deepened; Master Shifu giving his masterly advice to Po; Po's working though the necessary barriers to once again triumph good over evil all work in the character development department.

The story really moves along due to the overall story development and the methods used to tell it. When the story opens we are given the back story of Lord Shen. It is told using flat animated, 2D paper cutouts almost shadow puppet in form. As Po has flashbacks those images are again a flat 2D stylized animation form. At the end of the 90 minutes the credits are multi-layer 2D renderings that are well worth sitting through to enjoy. I'm sure in the 3D version they did more with this section. Sandwiched in between are the traditional computer renderings using shadow and highlights to give the 2D figures the look of 3D. The colors were bright and vibrant and the textures were highly detailed. From the fine lines in Lord Shen's feathers to the applique embroidery and stitches in vests and robes to the growth rings in a ram's or water buffalo's horns the nuances add to the graphical details giving further life to the characters.

One last special detail mention is for the fireworks. These fireworks sparkled and shimmered at a particle level like I haven't seen before. Tie that in with the smoke clouds and trails and you sit in your seat and ooooooh and aaaaaah during those scenes.

There is no easter egg at the end but as already mentioned, the credits are worth sitting through for the visuals of this movie rated PG for sequences of martial arts action and mild violence.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: The Tourist

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This week's movie selection is The Tourist staring Johnny Depp and Angelia Jolie. These two are some of the most beautiful people in the world. Director and writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck hoped that by putting these two in a film together they would produce a beautiful offspring in this spy action thriller intrigue film. Maybe if you put in the beautiful mind coming from Paul Bettany and add the gravitas of a former actor with a license to kill Timothy Dalton you'd have one kick butt movie. Well, sort of.

The action picks up in one of the most beautiful cities in the world: Paris, France. Elise Ward (Jolie) is under surveillance by the French police under the direction of British Financial Crimes division's Inspector John Acheson (Bettany) who reports to Chief Inspector Jones (Dalton). Ward is not the mark, Alexander Pearce is. He has money they are trying to get back. She is the link that they need to get to Pearce. They trail her from Paris to Venice where along the way she meets Frank Tupelo (Depp), a math teacher, on the train. Elise befriends Frank and as a result the police confuse him for the real target as does a Russian mobster. Pearce stole money from the mobster and he too wants it back. Things get complicated when there are sparks between Elise and Frank, but are they real or fake?

Jolie looks absolutely stunning throughout the entire movie. She had a high class wardrobe with designer ware, shoes, jewelry, make-up and hair. The camera loves it and so do we. For a spy movie, this was the lady who played Lara Croft, Mrs Smith and Evelyn Salt so who could be jumping around and kicking the opponents butt better than her, right? Not in this film. She didn't get a single sweat stain on any piece of clothing. The most action was, hmmmm...what was it? She engaged in what was a waltz but then again she didn't dance the whole song. Oh, wait, it was when she picked a set of handcuffs? NO, it was when she was in a boat and pushed it to full throttle! You get the idea. Not much in the way of butt kicking! Speaking of butt, I don't think von Donnersmarck missed a single opportunity to focus on Ms Jolie's curvaceous backside as she either turned or walked away from the camera. That's not a complaint mind you, just an observation.

For Depp, he didn't have the chance to show off for the camera the same way that Ms Jolie did. Frank was from Wisconsin and pulled out a full set of men's pajamas and at one point was running around the tiled roof tops of Venice trying to get away from the Russian thugs in said pajamas. It was good to see him act without guyliner or pancake makeup. Although there were a couple of times where he said lines and smiled that reminded me of Captain Jack. In this movie he provided the action on screen that we didn't get from Jolie.

The story moved at a fair pace over the 102 minute running time, but it never got extremely tight. Showing off Paris and Venice were nice eye candy. We were left wanting for the relationship to get a bit more heated and steamy as well as the action to really get cranked up. At no time was I biting my nails with either of the protagonists getting into a tough spot that looked completely hopeless without a miracle intervention of some sort. With the meh level of action and romance, the movie has a PG-13 rating for violence and brief strong language. If they could have gotten the action and romance up to the beauty level of the stars, it would have been a much better movie.

Going back to Ms Jolie's backside for a moment. I think it would make a funny video if when the movie is released to Blu-ray and DVD someone made a single video of all the times they showed off her curves. Put to the right music it just might be the right recipe for a viral video. I just might have a project to put on my calendar come the late spring/early summer time frame next year!

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.

Movie Review: Salt

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Once again Angelia Jolie is jumping around on the screen like she's done in past films as Mrs Smith or Lara Croft. Luckily this is not in eye popping 3D so she didn't jump into our laps. It was a good movie to jump into a bucket of popcorn with this summer action flick and don't forget to add the Salt, Evelyn Salt (Jolie)

The tag line for the movie is "Who is Salt?" The movie starts off with Salt stripped down to her underwear being brutally interrogated by the North Koreans as a spy where she proclaims her innocence. Turns out, yeah, she was and worth enough that the US government was willing to do a prisoner trade to get her back. After being roughed up, she's picked up at the border by partner CIA agent Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber). This roughing up and other acts of violence and action earned the movie a PG-13 rating.

Cut forward two years. Salt and Winter are leaving the office. Salt is particularly excited to get ready to go out to dinner with her husband. No wait, I thought agents weren't supposed to have loved ones because they can be used to lure and trap agents by the bad guys. You would think these people would go to movies and know this stuff! Anyway, a Russian agent turned himself in and while being questioned by Salt he accuses her of being a Russian agent who will kill the Russian President. Whoa! Either she has had her cover blown or she's being set up. In either case, she just wants to get home to hubby. Her fellow agents try to stop her but she insists and follows through on getting her way to get back to her apartment.

Walking on ledges, jumping off moving trains, hopping between the roofs of trucks traveling down the interstate, we see that Salt has skills, mad skills that she's willing to employ to prove her innocence. She says she's being set up but her actions make her look all the more guilty. Agents Winter and Peabody (Chiwetel Eijofor) argue the point back and forth. You know there's more than meets the eyes when a blond dyes her hair black to try to hide her identity. Some of the action was over the top, but made more enjoyable and believable with the limited use of CGI.

Directed by Phillip Noyce who gave us Patriot Games and The Bone Collector he strings us along on the journey in one way straight forward action flick but using flash backs to help fill in back story. Is Salt being falsely accused or is she a double agent? Noyce leads us down the trail for 100 minutes. It didn't seem like that long of a journey so he did a good job keeping me interested in the character and plot. The story was left in such a way that a sequel is more than likely if it does well at the box office. In one way the timing of the movie couldn't have been better with the recent capture of Russian spies who had integrated into American culture and sent back across the globe in a spy swap. Movie meet real life!

Could Evelyn Salt be a female James Bond? I don't think this would be a bad idea. She's got the marriage thing out of the way just like Bond did. She's got fighting skills that are up there. Sex appeal, put a check in that box. The only thing she really didn't have was the equivalent of a Q to make her all sorts of gadgets and gizmoes galore. If you could get her out of locations like frumpy North Korea and boring New York City and Washington DC and drop her into places like Tahiti, Monte Carlo, the beaches of Sao Paulo, now that would be awesome! With fingers crossed, we'll have to wait and see!

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.

To listen to the audio version, click here