The first thing I noticed about Kung Fu Panda was that the poster looked just like Drillbit Taylor. These are the things that occupy your mind while standing in line at the theater. I then began to wonder how many posters in the history of filmmaking featured the star of the movie balanced on one leg, seemingly about to put the cameraman’s lights out. Probably a lot.

On the surface, Kung Fu Panda looked like another lame Dreamworks attempt at milking the Pixar cash cow. Like other moneymaking but badly-reviewed attempts like Shark Tale, it seemed dull and uninspired and definitely had a dumb title.

Until now.

Well, the dumb title still stands. However, preliminary reports about Kung Fu Panda all indicate that it might be one of the best animated features we’ve seen in a long time. Recently, AICN featured a review by “avowed Dreamworks hater” Jerry Beck, in which he called Kung Fu Panda the “Kill Bill of CGI animated films.”

I’m not sure what that means either, but consider this: “As far as I can tell, they got the genre down PAT. My hats off to the crew here, who used animation completely to their benefit – since nothing in animation is spontaneous and everything has to be planned to the smallest detail, they were able to choreograph every last movement in every battle sequence to pinpoint timing and accuracy that would put Rube Goldberg to shame.”

Stunning revelation aside, I think we can all agree that the best part of the article is the “talkback” section, in which a few enterprising commenters have come up with a series of alternate titles such as “Kung Fu Chicken,” “Kung Fu Terminator,” “Kung Fu Person,” and “Kung Fu Man-Bear-Pig.” I’m looking forward to the sequel.

But until Kung Fu Panda hits theaters on June 6th, you can always play the animation trivia on Kwanzoo.

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