Chop Kick Panda

A movie that's perfect to watch when you're feeling down or need inspiration in your martial arts practice. Other reviews say it's a knock-off. Maybe. But it's very well done and fun to watch. I rented it first; now, I'm buying a copy.

I put this on, expecting to be amused by what a cheap copy-cat of Kung Fu Panda it would be. Instead, I was entertained by its humor, dialogue, animation, and voice acting. I chuckled at a lot of the dialogue, and its ironic, self-aware wit. To be sure, it does blatantly rip off major elements from Kung Fu Panda (the conflict, the character arc, the resolution, the *entire* opening dream sequence). But it adds its own style, so that it feels more like borrowing, rather than ripping off, those elements. I'm not quite sure why the producers decided to do this, as the team seems up to the task of telling an entertaining story in their own style. You could argue that it is parodying Kung Fu Panda, except that it doesn't ever poke fun at KFP, so it never feels like a parody. What makes it work is its well-executed, understated absurdity, similar to shows like South Park (minus the shock value), the Simpsons, Samurai Jack, and News Radio, to name a few. So if you like those, you'll probably be entertained by this as well. If this same crew were to make other features, I wouldn't think twice about checking them out as well.

I saw this at Best Buy today and just had to buy it. As a collector of rip off movies, I couldn't resist. As far as the blatant ripoff genre goes, this is a pretty bland one. Unlike other ones, such as Ratatoing and Spider's Web: A Pig's Tale (both of which I whole-heartedly recommend to any fan of so-bad-its-good movies), Chop Kick Panda never reaches that same abysmal quality that makes these movies so gosh darn hilarious. It is bad - don't get me wrong there - but it isn't terrible. I actually found myself chuckling at a joke here and there, but that wasn't enough to redeem it from its lazy art direction, flat characters, and awkward, completely out of place subplot about how the panda is a single father. Oh, and it downright copies Kung Fu Panda at points, too, nearly word-for-word. An interesting thing is that the summary of the movie on the back has literally nothing to do with the actual movie. Let me quote the back of the box: "Lu is a large (okay, fat) lovable panda who is the sixth generation owner of the Tae Kwon Do dojo." First off, the name of the character isn't even Lu; it's Zebo. Second, he works as a janitor at the dojo, and he certainly doesn't own it. "What Lu doesn't know is that buried beneath the dojo is the ancient Amulet of Fury." The amulet was hidden behind a picture, not buried. "When the villainous tiger warrior, Kudo, terrorizes the small village in pursuit of the amulet, it s up to Lu and his rag-tag team of martial artists to stop him!" The villain doesn't terrorize any town, and Zebo (Lu) doesn't form any 'rag-tag team of martial artists." Also strange is the fact that the DVD comes in its own little sleeve. You know a movie is good when it has a sleeve.

At first I thought this was the little panda fighter which is garbage and should not be bought. But no. It's the one and original chop kick panda. What? Kung fu panda? Never heard of it. Add this too your family movie collection. You will not regret it!

At no point did I actually think this was Kung Fu Panda. Let's put that out front. Taken on its own merits and not judged against the brilliant multi-million-dollar blockbuster, it's pretty decent. The story is small, with about as much character development as an episode of a series. The voice acting is good, if a little self-conscious. The art is good. Good enough at least to not distract, though it is very derivative of Genndy Tartakovski. The character design is fairly uninspired, with the exception of the monkey. Nicely done there. The story is a fairly run of the mill (albeit abbreviated) Hero's Journey. No surprises here. The dialogue is the film's strong suit. It's actually pretty funny and the pop-culture references are well used without being too numerous. I'm not sure how well they'll age, but for now it worked. Pretty good, really. Worth the 40 minutes.

Whenever there is a popular film someone releases a sound-ah_like or you think it could have something related to the film your interested in. Chop kick panda has nothing to do with "KungFu Panda" Chop Kick panda is a cheap little flash film. It's about 30 min's so my guess is this was a project film by a bunch of film students looking to sell it as kids pablum show. Do yourself a favor a keep your cash in your pocket.

Am besten beim Cover: Das ist irreführend, da es sich nicht um einen drei- sondern, einen zweidimensionalen Film handelt. Die Handlung hat auch nicht sonderlich viele Dimensionen (pun intended), ist mit etwa einer 3/4 Stunde wenigstens kurz. Ich sah 3 Kung Fu Panda-Ripoffs (Little Panda Fighter, Prodigy, den hier) und der hier ist m.E. der uninteressanteste.