Cynical Cinema

Kung-Fu Panda is not a kids movie so much as it is a kung-fu movie.  For kids.  Jack Black is the voice of the panda, Po, who is a clumsy fat oaf with a passion for kung-fu.  He is a huge fan of the Furious Five, who are the great kung-fu fighters of his little village.  Each one represents a different style of kung-fu, styles which will be very familiar to any fan of the kung-fu genre of movies.  The crane (David Cross), the viper (Lucy Liu), the mantis (Seth Rogen), the monkey (Jackie Chan) and the tigress (Angelina Jolie).  The film opens with a dream Po is having, a scene out of so many kung-fu movies, where the bad guys show up in the restaurant where the hero is quietly eating his food, and soon he is forced to kick all of their asses, causing massive property damage to the restaurant.

 Of course, this is just Po’s dream - in reality, he is not a martial arts hero, he is an employee in his father’s noodle shop.  When he lies to his dad and says he was dreaming about noodles, his dad flies into a frenzy - his son has had the noodle dream!  He is ready to take over the noodle shop from his father!  (Another wonderful theme from so many kung-fu flicks.)  In reality though, Po wants to be in the kung-fu scene.  And when there is going to be a big ceremony to annoint the next “chosen one”, the martial artist to whom ultimate enlightenment will be given, he does everything he can to go watch.  Through a series of mishaps (most of them hilarious), he ends up in the arena, and actually looks to be the “chosen one” himself.  Of course, the choice of Po sparks controversy.  How can he be the chosen one when he’s a big fat clumsy panda with no kung-fu skills at all?

The master, Shifu (voiced by Dustin Hoffman), is very annoyed at the selection of Po as the chosen one.  He believes that his master Oogway (a tortoise) has become senile and chosen the wrong person (or…animal) to be the chosen one.  Oogway, by the way, is hilarious.  He dispenses this bizarre, cubicle-wall type wisdom that is incredibly cheesy, even for a kung-fu movie.  (”The past is history, the future is a mystery, and right now is a gift.  That is why they call it the present.”)  But it’s delievered so solemnly that it’s awfully funny.  Anyway, Shifu decides that he will do everything he can to get Po to quit, so one of the other students can claim the title of “dragon warrior”, and get a chance to read the “dragon scroll” and become the greatest martial artist in history.  But Po won’t be so easily dissuaded.

Compounding the problem is the fact that Tai-Lung (voice of Ian McShane), a snow leopard, has escaped from the massive prison that holds him captive.  Tai-Lung is the former disciple of Master Shifu, a kung-fu student who surpassed even his master in skill, but then went bad.  He tried to take the dragon scroll for himself, but was driven away and imprisoned by Shifu and Oogway.  He is now bent on returning to the temple, taking the dragon scroll, and exacting horrible revenge on all those who turned against him.  Only Po, of course, stands in his way.

Kung-Fu Panda is terrific because everything in the movie rings true in terms of actual kung-fu cinema.  References to other movies abound.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, Hero, Once Upon A Time In China, and many others.  The one film I think is most closely mirrored is Kung-Fu Hustle, a bonkers kung-fu comedy that is available on DVD now, with very similar themes.  The bad guy gets out of prison and comes to attack the good guy, who all of a sudden learns that he is the chosen one with crazy kung-fu skills…very similar movies, both extremely good.  And in terms of old classics, Kung-Fu Panda most closely resembles the Jackie Chan comedic martial arts classic Drunken Master, with the main difference being that Master Shifu is not drunk.  But substitute the booze in that movie with the food from this one, and you have many very similar scenes.

Kung-Fu Panda is definitely funny, and definitely kid-friendly, but it’s so much more than a silly kids movie.  It’s a solid, very well done kung-fu film.  And the resolution in the final scene is absolutely perfect.  I don’t think I’m giving too much away here - it is a kids’ movie after all - but Po defeats Tai-Lung in the end with a style that has been perfectly set up over the course of the rest of the film, with Master Shifu’s teachings, Oogway’s wisdom, and Po’s own proclivities.  The only difference between Kung-Fu Panda and a real kung-fu movie in this style is the fact that Master Shifu actually lives in the end.  Hey - after all, it IS a kids’ movie.

Be Kind Rewind is the kind of movie that could have gone one of two ways. Either very stupid and silly, like so much of Jack Black’s work, or a very clever and ingenious send-up of familiar movies. It turns out to be somewhere in the middle, but that’s a good thing. It comes out June 17th from Alliance Films, and it’s well worth a rental. Mos Def is a clerk at a video store owned by Danny Glover that still rents VHS tapes while the rest of the world has switched to DVD. Jack Black is his crazy friend who believes the government is spying on him. When Glover leaves Mos Def in charge of the video store for a week, Black recruits him to help sabotage the power plant in the area. Def (is that how you refer to rappers by their last name? Who knows.) Backs out at the last minute, but Black goes ahead with the sabotage, which is unsuccessful, but leaves him electrocuted and magnetized.

When the magnetized Jack Black enters the video store, he erases all the video tapes on the shelves, and the two friends decide to fix the problem by remaking all the movies in the place on their own, based on their suspect knowledge of the films themselves. Mia Farrow makes a terrific appearance as the store’s most loyal customer, wanting to rent Ghostbusters. This becomes the first movie redone by Black and Def, and after the 20-minute version becomes something of a hit in the neighbourhood, they start making others. Rush Hour 2, Robocop, The Lion King, Driving Miss Daisy, 2001: A Space Odyssey, When We Were Kings, King Kong, Carrie, Last Tango in Paris and Men In Black get “sweded”, a bizarre term dreamed up by the guys to explain the origin of these bizarre copies of familiar movies. Before long, the store is a neighbourhood sensation.

There is so much other stuff in the film that will be familiar to the hardcore film buff. Not just the hilarious versions of famous movies that are done by the two main characters, but also the land developers who want to condemn the store and tear it down, leading to the inevitable community protest and rally to save the building. The baddies from the copyright office who show up to destroy the tapes, since the movies have been made without permission. The references Farrow makes to horror movies and how she can’t handle them. And Danny Glover’s obsession with Fats Waller and how the store is actually Waller’s birthplace and as such an historical landmark that requires preserving. All of it taken in a sweet and respectful way that gives a tip of the hat to so many movies that have come before.

Be Kind Rewind is also so gleeful in making the type of movie it sends up that it shows a great spirit in disregarding the problems that would be obvious to most viewers. Even with the poor quality of the films these two make, they would need more money than they obviously have just to make their re-shoots. If Jack Black is still magnetized to the point where he would have erased every tape in the store, he would also be erasing the tapes they make in the video camera. And Danny Glover never seems to have any kind of plan on how to actually save his store. But all this is terrific, because the gaps in logic are merely a part of the experience of the movie itself, a movie that ends up being almost as good, and in some cases (Rush Hour 2) even better than the films to which it pays homage.

Jack Black is his usual comically insane self, and Mos Def is superb as his buddy, whose relationships with Black and Glover create a more complex character than we expect to see in a film such as this. Also terrific in supporting roles are Glover as the blindly stubborn and slightly deluded old man, Mia Farrow as the sweet older woman around the corner, and Melonie Diaz as Alma, the girl who joins the movie making process when they need someone to make out with Jack Black. (The scene where they recruit her to star in their films is one of the highlights of this movie.) Add all these components together, and you get a sweet, clever, and wonderful movie by Michel Gondry, a man who clearly loves movies the way so many of the rest of us do.

Margot At The Wedding is about a woman named Margot who goes to a wedding. It comes out from Alliance Atlantis on Tuesday the 19th of February and it’s sort-of worthwhile. Margot is played by Nicole Kidman, who is a very uptight, scathingly bitter-tongued ice queen. She drags her son along with her to her sister’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) wedding to unemployed musician Jack Black. The dialogue is very smart, the acting is terrific, and the family is believable. The big problem with the movie is the lack of likeable characters. Kidman gets to her sister’s place, and immediately makes herself unlikeable as she attacks everything around her, questioning her sister’s choice in a husband, exacerbating the war between her sister and her neighbours, and visiting the man with whom she is having an affair. Jennifer Jason Leigh has just figured out she is pregnant, but hasn’t told anyone yet. She tells Kidman, who then tells her son, who then tells his cousin, who then asks her mom about it. The whole family harbours intense bitterness and hard feelings toward each other, much of which is not fully explained in the film.

A lot of scenes ring very true, especially in the little details. My favourite little detail is when Jason-Leigh’s young daughter tells Jack Black he has to hide his King Crimson album. It is the In The Court Of The Crimson King album (shown below), and I have had to do the same thing myself. It was initially up on the wall with the rest of my favourite vinyl albums. Welcome To My Nightmare, The Kids Are Alright, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Over-Nite Sensation, The Melodians Rivers of Babylon, and King Crimson. But I had to take it down, because my wall of albums is in the area downstairs where the kids play, and it really freaked out our 8-year-old. I can certainly understand why. This is just one in the many small details in Margot At the Wedding that ring so very true. Which is an indication of the intelligence of the movie. And some of these scenes are very funny, especially the Jack Black scenes. This is the kind of movie that suits him best. Where he is not the centre of attention, where he does not have to carry the comedy all on his own, but where he can add understated fat-sloppy-guy comedy to understated prim-proper-people type scenes. Think of the scene in High Fidelity where he laments the fact that the customer does not own Blonde On Blonde.

But Margot at the Wedding can only go so far on wit and intelligence and fine performances. For most movies, that should be enough. But the one adult character who is actually likeable is John Turturro, as Kidman’s husband, and he shows up for about two minutes of screen time. So by the end, the movie’s message is a decent one - no matter how lousy things get, or how lousy life is, you always have family to count on. But after watching the whole thing, you think “not THIS family!” These poor kids! Jennifer Jason Leigh is a space case, Nicole Kidman is a passive aggressive, unfaithful, clingy jerk of a mother, and Jack Black is a slovenly, childish, out of control deviant. (Which is funny, but not exactly laudable.) You wouldn’t wish this family on anyone, and you end up feeling pretty sorry for the kids. With more Turturro, this movie could have potentially been a 9/10. As it stands, it is very smart, but tough to watch in parts. And it jsut feels like a standard, well-written, indie dark comedy with nothing new to say.