Po Faced
Sun Herald
Sunday June 29, 2008
The Panda stars get the chop with HELEN BARLOW.
KUNG FU PANDA is a film that teaches children to reach for the sky. Po, a cute but clumsy panda, dreams of being a kung fu expert. Through a curious stroke of luck, he manages to become just that. The hip comic actor Jack Black draws on his childhood innocence to conjure the voice of the cuddly creature. He says it helped that he is now a father himself, of two-year-old Samuel, and has a new baby on the way. As one might imagine, he had an active fantasy life when he was a kid."My big thing was being bionic, like the Six Million Dollar Man," Black says. "I also loved the Bruce Lee films and I took karate classes because I wanted to be a kung fu master. Now I have some of the moves, some of the kicks and I have to say it came naturally to me," he beams proudly, with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.The film, which follows Po being given his big chance when the inventor of kung fu anoints him the long-prophesied Dragon Warrior, is in many ways a love letter to Black's effervescent personae. Angelina Jolie, who voices Tigress, one of the legendary Furious Five kung fu experts with whom Po trains under Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), admits that when she worked with Black her kids were impressed."If Jack Black or Jackie Chan walked into my house, my kids would drop to the floor. I love martial arts; they're so great for children. My oldest son is getting into them - I hope all our kids do. So much of kids' time is spent sitting at a desk these days. It's great for them to get up and do something with discipline and honour."Now, as she is about to give birth to twins, Jolie says it's a funny time to be promoting the film. "When we were watching the movie, this one was responding really strongly to the music," she says, pointing to one side of her rotund belly."My kids have seen it and love it too. I had fun doing the film but I can say I completely did it for my children. Two of them are from Asia [her eldest, Maddox, 6, and Pax, 4, were orphans from Cambodia and Vietnam respectively]. When I found out the film was going to be set in China and it was going to deal with the history and the culture and the morals, I was excited. Also, I get to be a cool tiger and that impressed them."In the story Master Shifu makes an important realisation that Po is actually good at kung fu when he takes away his food. "My God, look what Po conjures inside of himself to get a cookie!" Hoffman notes excitedly. "Isn't that great? Po says, 'I eat when I feel bad and that's how I compensate.' It takes a tremendous amount of energy to be self-destructive but, if you can reverse that energy and use it somehow in a positive way, then you learn."
© 2008 Sun Herald