Kung Fu Panda

It's the story about a lazy, irreverent slacker panda, named Po, who is the biggest fan of Kung Fu around...which doesn't exactly come in handy while working every day in his family's noodle shop. Unexpectedly chosen to fulfill an ancient prophecy, Po's dreams become reality when he joins the world of Kung Fu and studies alongside his idols, the legendary Furious Five -- Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey -- under the leadership of their guru, Master Shifu. But before they know it, the vengeful and treacherous snow leopard Tai Lung is headed their way, and it's up to Po to defend everyone from the oncoming threat. - Anthony Pereyra (imdb.com)

So I've seen this twice now, and I have to be honest, it's not a bad movie. Sure, it's not brilliant, it's not hilariously funny, but it's one of those animated flicks built on the power of one-liners and good voice work. I don't like Jack Black, but I like him in Kung Fu Panda. His casual, conversational style works well in animated movies. The other voices are decent - Seth Rogen was probably one of the better supporting parts just 'cause he has a very distinct sound. I have no idea why Angelina Jolie was even in the movie.

Usually movies made of one-liners don't work for me, but at least Kung Fu Panda was consistent. There's nothing that disappoints me more than a movie that starts out great, and then crams all the good lines in the first 40 minutes and has nothing left for the end. It kinda slips away into nothingness. In general, Panda relied on subtle-funny lines combined with the animation so it wasn't hard to distribute equally through the whole movie.

I thought the plot was good. It's a classic message (everyone has power, everyone has strength, yadda yadda) but delivered in a relatively un-cliche way. There's some background to characters, some depth, which is always refreshing. All around, a solid story.

In a nutshell, it's a fine movie. It's entertaining, positive, not stupid (most of the time)...a movie to see and walk away feeling pleased. Sure, in a week, one won't really remember it, but that's okay. You can always see it again.

Wall-E

In the distant future, a small waste collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.

This movie has a lot of buzz. Teasers came out months ago, critics gushed over it, it's been called the next Pixar masterpiece, blah blah blah. I feel weird saying this, but I really wasn't loving it. First of all, it dragged on and on and on. It felt like that flexible lamp short gone horribly awry. Wall-E is cute, yes, the animators did a great job of giving such an ugly little robot personality, yes, I liked that, but we get it already. Let's just make the movie a clean 80 minutes. It just confused me. A lot. I couldn't figure out if it was for children or adults. It moved really slow, generally a trait of movies for more mature viewers, but the story was very simplistic, like a traditional kid's flick. Gah! WHAT ARE YOU, "WALL-E"!!?? The lack of humans was definitely a problem for me; I know the robots were supposed to replace the human qualities, but the robots were just so darn cute ALL THE TIME. And the actual humans were so depressing, I felt like I wanted to die. The end had hope for humanity, but STILL. They were just saaaaaad. Other Pixar movies are so much better. No robot with a two-word vocabulary can replace the voice work of Ellen Degeneres in "Finding Nemo," or the character of Mike in "Monsters Inc."