Kung Fu Panda

After reading this thread I was really nervous about going to see Kung Fu Panda, but my daughter insisted (ever since the first posters and trailers came out months ago), so we went last night. And.....

...the movie is really not what Melissa expected. If anything, it is the opposite - in one moment it uses a fat joke to make you laugh (which sometimes you manage to supress, sometimes not), but then in the next moment it shames you for laughing at the previous joke. What the movie parodies the best are old martial arts movie, from Bruce Lee movies, through Karate Kid, to Crouching tiger..., and even Tampopo! As I have seen loads of such movies in my life, I could recognize the way they poked fun at the genre cliches, but some others in the audience may have missed those references.

The movie is packed with action and humor at all times and was really fun to watch. Poe, the panda, is made fun more for his lack of ability coming from lack of training, than for his shape ands size. He is chosen to save the valley from a particularly nasty character not because of his prowess, but because an old, wise turtle said so (which is making fun of the Chinese movie cliches). There is no time for years of classical training, and he is really not suited for it anyway. But he is willing - he has been dreaming all his life of becoming a kung-fu master yet facing the reality that his upbringing could never make that dream come true. And his master has to do something - and quickly!

So, the master thought and realized that, just like with his other students, he needs NOT to train Poe in kung-fu but to adopt kung-fu to fit Poe. He realized that the kid is easily distracted and that he fares worst when he thinks too much about fighting (paralysis by analysis), but can fight just fine when motivated by something else. Poe, a son of a soup chef, is motivated by food, and the 'catch the dumpling' scene in the middle of the movie is absolutely awesome as, over a span of several minutes, Poe transforms from a clumsy fat panda into a nimble, fast, fighting machine. Sorta like Taiji Kase (I got my brown belt at a Kase seminar and my black at a Shirai seminar, so I have seen them both in action: Kase is amazingly strong and fast even after a huge meal and lots of beer!). His natural body shape becomes a part of his fighting style, which he uses to defeat the enemy at the end. And remains humble. And loses his self-consciousness about his body size in the process.

So, the movie uses fat jokes in order to shame us for laughing. It is a fat-acceptance movie throughout, not just at the end. Two of the five awesome fighters are women, one of which, the tigress, is the best of them all, and two of them chastize the others whenever they mention something about Poe's weight. My daugher loved it and wants to see it again.