Cannes. Kung Fu Panda.

"Cartoons at a super-serioso film festival?" asks Time's Richard Corliss. "Mais oui, if the festival is Cannes, which has been hospitable to animation from the start; Walt Disney's Make Mine Music and Dumbo won prizes the first two years.... Today DreamWorks unveiled its latest ani-movie, Kung Fu Panda [site]. As cunning visual art and ultra-satisfying entertainment, it proved an excellent choice."

Variety's Todd McCarthy finds it "a nice looking but heavily formulaic DreamWorks animation entry. The tale of a bumbling, pot-bellied, black-and-white bear who has greatness thrust upon him when anointed to protect his community, the vocally star-laden effort features an abundance of broad, buffoonish slapstick that will play perfectly well with kids to desired BO effect. But overall mild impact will likely prevent this from joining the top commercial tier of animated attractions."

"The world has already fallen in love with a grumpy green ogre (Shrek) and a lugubrious mammoth (Ice Age) so it should have no trouble clasping a podgy, self-deprecating panda to its collective bosom," writes Allan Hunter in Screen Daily. "Kung Fu Panda ticks all the boxes for must-see family entertainment and the cute factor is only enhanced by the vocal expertise of Jack Black and the fact that this particular rotund panda has delusions of martial arts grandeur."

Screening Out of Competition, naturally.

Online viewing tip. Goldenfiddle spots a slip-up.

Update: "Perhaps the best thing about Kung Fu Panda is that it's an action comedy that doesn't skimp on the action," writes James Rocchi at Cinematical. This is "a well-made kid's film that earns high points for how directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne clearly crafted and contemplated its look and feel with ambition and style. Anyone can make a computer-animated cartoon with fuzzy animals doing kung fu; you have to be at least a little inspired to make a computer-animated cartoon featuring fuzzy animals doing kung fu in widescreen Cinemascope."

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Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 15, 2008 12:57 PM