IF THE world of computer feature animation were, say, a couple of characters in a sitcom, Pixar would be the smart, sensitive, well-mannered overachiever and DreamWorks would be the loud, bumbling, insecure, media-addled doofus. Which is why the gorgeous, highly stylized, old-school 2-D hand-drawn animation sequence at the beginning of "Kung Fu Panda" comes as such a big surprise.
For a moment, you're lulled into believing that the studio that never met a moldy pop-culture reference it didn't want to marry has undergone a lightning-bolt conversion to sophisticated, confident storytelling. But it all turns out to be a dream. Literally. The sequence that kicks off the movie is the recurring dream of a three-dimensional panda bear named Po, whose every strand of panda fur is lovingly digitally rendered by a bank of computers.
That's not to say that "Kung Fu Panda" doesn't look good. For a DreamWorks production, especially, it looks fantastic. Gone are the studio's usual penchant for garishness and lack of stylistic unity; the claustrophobic, sealed-in worlds; the horrible neon colors; the feeling that everything's been dipped in a hard plastic coating. Instead, production designer Raymond Zibach and art director Tang Heng, who spent years researching Chinese art and architecture (not to mention kung fu movies), have inserted vast, moody, misty landscapes, fanciful interiors and traditional Chinese colors (red and gold dominate) to give the movie an epic, expansive, ancient quality that's a real pleasure to inhabit.
The character design is clever too. The Furious Five, the greatest kung fu masters in the land, are anthropomorphized animals based on the Shaolin five animal fighting system. There's Tigress (voiced by Angelina Jolie), Crane (David Cross), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Monkey (Jackie Chan). The action, heavily influenced by Hong Kong martial arts films, is beautifully choreographed.
