The Bauer Confidential

Alternate Title: “He said tenders!”

So Matthew usually writes the movie reviews, partially because lately there has not been much at the movies that has interested me.  For the past several months, every movie we’ve seen in the theater has been because Matthew really wanted to see it.  Don’t get me wrong, they’ve been enjoyable movies.  It’s just that special effects and a cursory story aren’t enough to make me wanna drop serious change on a two hour flick.  I will often give in to a weekend matinee, however, to keep the man happy.

This past weekend Northern California experienced a gratuitous heat wave.  Since we don’t have air-conditioning at home, and didn’t want to spend all day Saturday in lab, we decided to stay cool Saturday afternoon by catching a film.  Since all the new movies for the weekend looked horrid, we chose Kung Fu Panda.  I felt a little silly, going to see a kids movie on a weekend afternoon.  I figured the theater would be full of kids, running up and down the aisles screaming.  I could not have been more wrong.  There was a grand total of one child in the entire theater (it was a small theater, but still).  She was a cute little girl, I’m guessing around five, and she provided some of the most entertaining moments of the movie.  As the movie began, the little girl told her father, in a very grown up voice, how she’d been wanting to see this movie “for a very long time.”  When the panda appeared on the screen she exclaimed “It’s a Panda!!!” with glee (this is probably funnier to Matthew and I because of this comic).  A bit later in the movie when the Panda was getting his fluffy butt kicked by his teacher, the panda shouted “Oh, my tenders!” when he received a swift blow to the groin, to which the little girl replied “He said tenders!”  The entire theater cracked up, not at the movie, but at the little girl.  That was pretty much all we heard out of her, which was far less than the bunch of doped-up college kids sitting across the aisle who laughed so hard at the non-funny parts that we couldn’t hear a lot of the movie.

I suppose I should get to the movie review part of this entry.  The truth is, there’s not a lot to say.  If you’ve seen the previews or commercials for this movie then you know exactly what it’s about and you won’t get any surprises.  Our unlikely hero Po is chosen to be the dragon warrior, which surprises everyone, including his begrudging new mentor and fellow fighters.  Po must find a way to defeat the evil warrior who is coming to steal the secrets of Kung Fu and destroy the village. It’s your typical DreamWorks movie, not as good as the original Shrek but better than Flushed Away.  The voices are done well; with the exception of  Jack Black, you might not even register any of the other famous voices filling out the cast, like Dustin Hofman, Jacky Chan, and Angelina Jolie.  Funny and up-lifting for the kiddies, Kung Fu Panda has just enough humor aimed at the adults to keep them laughing.