Kung Fu Panda, the latest animated effort from the folks at DreamWorks, is an energetic and surprisingly colorful family adventure tale that trumps formula through sheer force of personality. Obviously owing a debt to Joseph Campbell, the movie tells the story of a big-hearted panda bear who follows his bliss, and discovers the unlikely hero within himself.

Enthusiastic, big and more than a little clumsy, Po (voiced by Jack Black) is the biggest fan of kung fu around — he has vivid, participatory dreams in which he stars as a swaggering, heroic figure, and foes “go blind from exposure to pure awesomeness.” Unfortunately, none of this exactly comes in handy while working every day in the noodle shop of his very practical father, Mr. Ping (voiced by James Hong). Po’s dreams unexpectedly become reality when he’s chosen to fulfill an ancient prophecy by the aged Oogway (Randall Duk Kim, more or less doing the Yoda thing). Tapped to defend his city and learn the secret of the sacred “Dragon Scroll,” which will grant him unlimited power, Po joins the world of elite kung fu and studies alongside his idols, the legendary “Furious Five” — Tigress (Angelina Jolie,
purring proudly), Monkey (voiced by Jackie Chan), Mantis (voiced by Seth
Rogen), Viper (voiced by Lucy Liu) and Crane (voiced by David Cross, of
Arrested Development).

With the looming threat of an attack by the vengeful, all-powerful Tai Lung (voiced by Ian McShane), Oogway’s decision doesn’t sit well with his former pupil, and the trainer of the Furious Five, Master Shifu (voiced by Dustin Hoffman). He had envisioned one of his charges inheriting the mantle of leadership, certainly not a pudgy panda bear. Shifu tries to make life for Po so miserable that he’ll quit, but before they know it, bitter snow leopard Tai Lung — Shifu’s adopted son — is headed their way, and it’s up to Po to defend everyone from the oncoming threat. Putting his heart (and considerable girth) into the task, Po tries to live up to everyone’s expectations of him, and the unlikely hero ultimately finds that his greatest weaknesses might turn out to be strengths.

You wouldn’t necessarily know it from a lot of the advance promotional clips, but Black’s intentionally overbearing voice work– which completes a circular lap of total investment and then does another 180 degrees for good measure — turns out to be a good match for Po, who compensates for his nervousness through excess (both eating and talking). There’s something infectious about his indefatigability and lack of self-pity; Po doesn’t eventually succeed merely by his wits, physical skill or pure happenstance, but rather a combination of all three, something that seems to ring true to real life.

Leaning a bit on Asian art and animation style, Kung Fu Panda eschews the rounded angles and cuddly style of a lot of youth-skewing animated flicks, and is better and more intriguing and visually engaging for it. Co-directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne do a good job of balancing slapstick comedic elements with fast-paced action, while never straying far from the core story, or awkwardly cramming in referential modern gags or bathroom humor. Shifu and the Furious Five, too, are nicely drawn; while the latter each have different feelings about being passed over for Po, the point is that they have these feelings and work through them, they aren’t reduced to overly broad, two-dimensional slapstick sounding boards.

While the reasons for Tai Lung’s bitterness are well sketched, there isn’t necessarily a strong sense of imperilment with respect to the town as a whole. In fact, it’s never quite clear, apart from his physical brutishness and some hastily pronounced expository balderdash, what real threat Tai Lung presents; he’s an antagonist because of his snarling discontent and blinding personal ambition, not any true opposition.

If one wants to further nitpick, the action match-ups — particularly the finale, with Po having progressed a bit in skill — aren’t necessarily based on any principles of counterweight. No, Shifu’s training technique is instead just based on having Po imagine food, and then dangling these tangible rewards just out of his reach. (Somewhat weirdly, there’s a silly but important mystical finger hold that seems nipped from the ending of Hot Rod — or vice versa, since it’s just as easy to assume, given the typical gestation of an
animated film — and also pops up in the trailer’s for this week’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.) Still, the visual pop and thrill of these action sequences don’t disappoint — indeed, among the high points of the entire movie, alongside a bridge-set battle between Tai Lung and the Furious Five, is a wild, dumpling-inspired training montage, which could play favorably alongside scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That’s enough for kids and tweens, certainly, and parents won’t be suffering through this with rolled eyes, either. (Paramount/DreamWorks, PG, 91 minutes)

Admired and respected as one of the world’s great film artisans, Roman
Polanski has led a life full of its own dramatically cinematic highs
and lows. Now a happily settled and seemingly at-peace family man, he’s
been a Holocaust survivor, a brash raconteur and l’enfant terrible,
an Oscar-winning director, a shockingly sudden widower and a fugitive
felon. It’s the latter description, of course, that still hangs most
heavily over him — the result of a 1977 guilty plea for unlawful
sexual intercourse with a minor — and that’s the subject of the new
documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, premiering this week on HBO.

Chock
full of infrequently reported intriguing details (the incident took
place at Jack Nicholson’s house, while he was out of town) and some
speculative sidebar analysis (the prosecutor ruminates on “corruption
winning out over innocence in or over water” in all of Polanski’s films
up to that point), Wanted and Desired
is a fascinating exploration of a complicated case that is still hugely
misunderstood. Serving as both a differential snapshot of the law from
a bygone era and a warts-and-all exploration of the case and its
bizarre, messy aftermath (European press tended to see Polanski as a tragic, brilliant figure, and forgive his faults; one American writer covering the case called the director a “malignant, twisted dwarf”), the movie opens with a statement that at
first blush seems a self-pitying stretch, with the filmmaker subject, in an archival interview snippet, comparing
himself to “a mouse that’s being toyed with by an abominable cat.”
Remarkably, while not excusing the crime, director Marina Zenovich
slowly shows that to be more or less true.

Like many, Zenovich  at first knew only the barest
details of the case: contracted by a European fashion magazine,
Polanski had arranged for a private photo shoot with the then
13-year-old Geimer, signed off on by Geimer’s mother. Charged with a litany of felony counts, including providing drugs to a
minor, he later plead guilty to one count, and fled the country before
sentencing. What Zenovich found out, though, was that Polanski actually served six weeks in Chino State Penitentiary for psychological
analysis, as part of a strange, elongated pas de
trois between legal counsel and adjudicator.

This isn’t a revelation in and of itself, of course, just an underreported fact from the past, but how the case arrived at that point in an era of indeterminate sentencing —
where Polanski could have been sent to jail from anywhere from six
months to 50 years — is a twisted story of play-acted justice. For that, Polanski needs a foil, and while Wanted and
Desired is indeed awash in grey in the picture it delivers of
Polanski, one of the more interesting characters that emerges is the
judge in the case. Laurence Rittenband had previously shown an
inclination for the spotlight, requesting and receiving oversight of
paternity suits against Spencer Tracy and Marlon Brando, among other
celebrity cases. His strange and overly solicitous courtship of the
media turned what was already a circus — with European press, not
bound by victim confidentiality rules, descending on Geimer’s school
and outing her identity — into something even more surreal and fatally flawed. (As an interesting sidebar, lifelong bachelor
Rittenbrand also had at least two girlfriends — “one for the cooking and one for the other stuff, he once explained to a friend — one of whom was 30 years
younger than him.)

A
riveting examination of the story behind the sound-bite, Wanted and Desired is superbly constructed with archival footage and modern day interviews, and is notable for the unanimity it
locates amidst all the murky morality of the situation. Even prosecutor
Roger Gunson, a straight-arrow Mormon who would eventually publicly side with
defense attorney Doug Dalton in some of the more explosive allegations
regarding the handling of the case, says that under the circumstances
he’s not surprised Polanski fled. As for Polanski, one can abhor
the crime, but still glimpse the pathology that informed it, dating
back to the brutal 1969 murder of his pregnant fiancée, Sharon Tate. As
he revealingly says in a rare interview with Clive James from 1984
which bookends the film, “Well, different people deal with things in
different ways — some go to whorehouses, some go to monasteries.” (HBO/ThinkFILM, unrated, 99 minutes)