As a life-long fan of Bruce Lee, the legendary king of kung fu himself, I was a bit turned off by the idea of Kung Fu Panda at first, because it just didn't sound appealing enough to me. My adored icon, as everybody knows, is remembered as a perfectly trained living weapon, swift as lightning and agile as a cat and with the right physical appearance to match, whereas this tale's protagonist, Po, is anything but. If anything, he is just a very clumsy, obviously overweight panda busy daydreaming and excelling in getting even the most simple things wrong. To get the audience even more off track, Po's dad happens to be a goose and the owner of a noodle shop, where he works as waiter. Does this all sound very unfamiliar? Well, at least it did to me until the admittedly likeable fan but novice of kung fu decides to go and see the election of the so-called "Dragon Warrior" and ends up being picked himself.

Fortunately, the production team of the film was careful not to transform Po into a deadly martial arts expert in the blink of an eye, which would have killed all the fun even in an amusing spoof martial arts animation of this kind. Instead we all get to witness how the lovely panda is made fun of for his lack of speed, cleverness, and physique and even gets kicked out of the temple by the wise but relentless teacher of the esteemed "Furious Five" himself. How this initially ham-fisted underdog panda eventually earns the respect of his fellow students, gets his share of dumplings, and proves that he really packs quite a punch is one laugh-out-loud experience that simply asks for more kung fu fighting animations to follow.