Kung Fu, Faith and Funnies

Kung Fu Panda ... watch this movie. Buy it if you can.

Yes I'm sure most of you have already seen it. But if you haven't seen it yet and you love kung fooooooooooooo! ... then you're seriously missing out. I've been a fan of Jack Black's since his early movie days. And a fan of martial arts even longer. Even liked ol' Jack Black when he played one of the tech guys in the movie Enemy of the State with Will Smith. And in the movie School of Rock ... he, well ... rocked.

He rocks even harder in this one.

But what I liked most about this movie was the lesson within the story. Yeah I'm getting older all right, I look for lessons. And the lesson is simply this "There is no secret ingredient". Yeah that's right. It's all about you kid. You make the decisions, you call the shots, you're free to choose. But you need to stop wallowing in what has been and stop worrying about what might happen or else you'll miss what's going on.

Although KFP doesn't scream religion, it surely has some lessons that faith teaches us too. "Try hard" "Do your best" "Be kind to those less fortunate" "Protect the weak" "Give of your time and effort". Now being a person of faith, I believe in all those things too. Some christians would tell you the movie is about kung-fu and "brothers and sisters" that's all eastern mysticism, AND that I'm going to hell for even agreeing with it. But I'm fairly sure that when I stand before the Big Guy's throne someday for the "Big Talk", those christians won't be sitting on it ;) But don't let me turn this into a faith-based film (or even a post). It's really not. But there are some good parallels between faith and the movie, that's all I'm saying.

The movie is fraught with all the kung-fu goodness that you can handle. This movie has it all with the fight scenes. And they don't get much funnier than this either. Especially since the movie comes complete with a Jack Black narrative at the beginning that has me laughing till I cry and I've seen the movie like 4 times already. It's that good or I'm just that hard up for entertainment :) You decide, haha

The Furious Five are completely awesome, perhaps taking us all back to a day when we were young, awkward, and nerdy and had someone we thought was awesome, wanting to be just like them. Now me ... I'm still nerdy and awkward, I just got old ... and the Furious Five are still awesome, with me wanting to be just like them ;)

Okay, now I fully admit, if the movie hadn't been so darn funny I would probaly have missed the lessons in it. But the comedy and characters draw you in and it's all over far too quickly. The greatness of any movie that sticks with you for a long time, is whether the movie grabs you with entertainment. If it can do that then it can mold your experience from there, be it teaching a lesson, touching your heart strings or making you laugh out loud.

Movies like this one are why people go to the movies to begin with, to be entertained. To forget about the general crud going on and just for a little while ... dream.

So go. Buy it. Don't rent it. Buy it. Are you still here ....?