Summer of '08: Kung Fu Panda and You Don't Mess with the Zohan

There are no accidents.

Welcome back to the latest edition of Summer of ‘08!

This week, we cover one of our best, and easily our worst, movies so far.

Kung Fu Panda (2008)

When the Valley of Peace is threatened, lazy Po the panda discovers his destiny as the "chosen one" and trains to become a kung fu hero, but transforming the unsleek slacker into a brave warrior won't be easy. It's up to Master Shifu and the Furious Five -- Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey -- to give it a try.

June 6, 2008

Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan
music by Hans Zimmer, John Powell
screenplay by Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger
produced by Melissa Cobb
directed by John Stevenson, Mark Osborne

I'm a middle school teacher and it's that time in the school year when I'm just showing movies and counting down the days until summer break. I always try to make our movie-watching somewhat educational, tying their year's worth of schooling into the movie I've picked, which is why we've previously watched Hoop Dreams when reading The Crossover or The Rescue during a unit on resilient teens.

I needed to watch Kung Fu Panda for this column anyway, so I figured I would throw it on. Uhhhhh...Hero's Journey, right? That's the "excuse" I used to show Star Wars anyway...

I crushed it. Not only does this movie still kill with pre-teens (honestly, I hadn't seen this in over a decade and, turns out, it still kills with me) because it's funny and awesome, but it largely works as a movie because the story structure is perfect. Sure, most Dreamworks movies try to follow the bullet-proof and idiot-proof Hero's Journey formula, but when you see it done really well while still feeling totally original and fresh, that's special.

Is some of that originality due to the fact that Jack Black plays an overweight panda who works at a noodle shop but dreams of being a kung fu master? Yes, that has surely never been done before. And the Chinese culture is definitely Hollywoodized, because how else would we get Seth Rogen as an ass-kicking mantis or Davis Cross as a wise-cracking crane? But the ass-kicking kicks ass and the cracks are wise and I'm writing this as they are oohing and giggling and shushing each other*. And it's actually educational (!), reinforcing our lesson on the ins and outs of narrative structure.

Also, Jack Black is just such a movie star. I was sort of out on him for a bit, during that stretch from about Year One to The Polka King, but I'm back on the train. Jumanji, Dear Santa (I liked it), and turns out I need to watch the other Kung Fu Panda movies...

*The movie just ended and they are karaoke-style screaming along with Cee-Lo Green's "Kung Fu Fighting," which is playing over the end credits. This song is 50 years old. That's crazy. I've never seen a movie play like this with a class.

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (2008)

An Israeli counterterrorism soldier with a secretly fabulous ambition to become a Manhattan hairstylist. Zohan's desire runs so deep that he'll do anything -- including faking his own death and going head-to-head with an Arab cab driver -- to make his dreams come true.

June 6, 2008

Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Nick Swardson, Lainie Kazan
cinematography by Michael Barrett
music by Rupert Gregson-Williams
screenplay by Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel, Judd Apatow
produced by Adam Sandler, Jack Giarraputo
directed by Dennis Dugan

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, on the other hand, is terrible. Like total unwatchable garbage. I thought, for sure, that going back to read some reviews from 2008 would make me roar with laughter. I don't particularly enjoy writing scathing reviews, but some folks do, and I like reading what they have written. Color me shocked when the reviews were more or less just okay.

My first warning sign was the 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, which seemed dangerously high. But, assuring myself, I figured that a good amount of that calculation was some of the post-Netflix Sandler revisionism that has permeated the conversation around his career. "He was great in Uncut Gems!" has somehow turned into "Sandy Wexler wasn't that bad!' and I thought that maybe this (I've participated in a little of it myself) was happening here.

Nope! These are reviews from 2008 that...kinda liked it!