“But you’re a big, fat, panda!”
“No. I’m the big, fat panda.”

Out of context, that pithy exchange between good panda and evil snow leopard may seem to lend credence to my initial snap judgment — based on the typically superficial trailers — that Kung Fu Panda would be ninety minutes of fat jokes, tasteless humor, toy marketing, and Jack Black actively pursuing whatever might be the next rank of Hell after “sellout”.

When I learned that two of central Indiana’s three IMAX theaters would be presenting it super-sized, the part of my id that fiends for the aesthetically perverse demanded to be immersed in the experience of seeing a cartoon panda’s heinder expanded to seven stories tall. Any other building with a crack that size would be unanimously condemned, but I did my best to withhold condemnation until I opened my mind and gave it a try.

Perhaps 20% of the film crept up to my near-flatlined expectations. The full plot is knowable from start to finish just from the premise: chunky loser becomes unexpected Chosen One, faces impossible odds against unbeatable foe, saves day anyway, pleases small children. We know how the movie gets from point A to point B, we know where those points are, we know their exact square mileage and how their local cuisine tastes. Even the children know this. Complaints about a movie’s tired or overused plot no longer serve any useful purpose except to prove that the writer would be better off avoiding new works and finding a new hobby altogether, one in which every experience is unique — say, snowflake collecting or blindfolded origami. Face it: movies are over for you.

What makes or breaks a movie nowadays is whether or not the filmmakers can find a fresh approach to worn material. Some elements of Panda are a letdown. After numerous training foulups, Our Hero, the insatiable Po, eventually finds a regimen that works for him…inspired by food! And yes, his lard is a major factor in the final battle. And yes, he takes one shot to the groin. And yes, his heinder mugs for the audience (or rather, just plain mugs the audience) in no less than three loving closeups. And if I had even the remotest inclination of prematurely naming this the Best Animated Movie of the Year, along comes an end-credit duet of “Kung Fu Fighting” between Jack Black and Cee-Lo that instantly removed that honorific from consideration.

Beyond those reservations, Panda achieves a level to which I thought it would neither aspire nor approximate: rather than just spoofing old chop-socky films for the sake of shameless summer larfs, it succeeds in the wake of such failures as Speed Racer (where the sparse hand-to-hand combat was a just token, weak-sister Matrix nod) and Redbelt (which ultimately was about Mixed Martial Arts in the same sense that Panda is about Chinese zoology) in delivering the greatest martial arts spectacle in theaters this summer.

Before life demands otherwise of him, Po’s everyday life is a mere shadow compared to his dreams of someday fighting alongside the Furious Five, the people’s greatest kung-fu champions, as any powerless young man might wish. Alas, he resigns himself to a destiny of mediocrity in the noodle-restaurant biz, doomed to follow the pointy footsteps of his noodle-frenzied stork father (veteran character actor James Hong, clearly having a ball).

When an uncontrolled fireworks mishap thrusts Po into the center ring of a Furious Five arena show, he’s fingered as the prophesied Dragon Warrior (read: Chosen One) by the supreme guru, an elderly supernatural kung-fu tortoise named Oogway (Randall Duk Kim, the Keymaker from The Matrix) who insists that the fate of the world lies in the hands of this ursine Chris Farley analog. He’s either completely out of his mind, or in touch with the universe on a level incomprehensible to mere mortals.

Questioning this decision most of all is Oogway’s most faithful follower and the Furious Five’s own master, the red panda sensei Shifu (Dustin Hoffman, arguably his meatiest role in years). In other movies, the bog-standard role of the merciless, skeptical leader whose worst pupil eventually helps him comes around is usually written as a one-note tackle dummy (like every drill sergeant in every military comedy ever made), but Hoffman’s lines and tones rise above that. Shifu has been training his pupils under the certainty that one of them would naturally be the fabled Dragon Warrior. Oogway’s left-field random choice shakes Shifu’s faith in him to his very core, causing him to question what he’s been taught, to question what he’s been teaching in turn…and, of course, to heap misery upon Po His eventual turnaround is achieved only through a very methodical character progression, culminating in a climactic showdown in which the feisty li’l master puts that world-famous same-sized Star Wars crabapple puppet to shame.

Shifu’s worst regret in his life is the one pupil he loved more than any other, who went to the Dark Side more deeply than any other, and who drained the joy of teaching from Shifu’s life — Tai Lung, a ferocious snow leopard with eyes that burn yellow with rage and the voice of Ian McShane that seethes with every line. Tai Lung, too, was once thought to be the Dragon Warrior, but Oogway’s offhand dismissal not only wounded Shifu’s pride, it drove Tai Lung off into a murderous rage that only Oogway’s mad kung-fu skillz could halt. Further deliberation on the prophecy reveals that Tai Lung is, in fact, the one that the Dragon Warrior must himself face in combat. He’s initially manacled into a seemingly inescapable prison surrounded by a harsh environment and a platoon of fierce rhino guards, but his prowess is overwhelmingly demonstrated in a bravura escape sequence in which every single action by his captors only makes the prophecy that much more self-fulfilling.

The Furious Five are understandably furious. Like Tai Lung, they were led to believe by Shifu’s teachings that one of them would become the Dragon Warrior. Given that that quintet is Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, and David Cross, it’s hard to blame them for decrying their demotion to second-fiddle status, for defying Oogway and, by extension, their own destiny. Were any one of them to headline their own film, one that might subscribe to the popular Terminator self-determinism creed of, “There is no fate but what we make for ourselves,” I’m sure they would ignore the prophecy, defeat Tai Lung, and win the movie in the name of free will and strike a blow against wizened seers everywhere. (Well, maybe not Cross. He doesn’t get to headline anything until he’s performed community service to atone for Alvin and the Chipmunks.) However, this isn’t that kind of movie, as noted by the repeated platitude, “There are no accidents.” As punishment for their well-meaning rebellion, the five are given barely half a dozen lines apiece, though their valiant yet futile attempt to bring Tai Lung to justice makes for a bedazzling rope-bridge set piece guaranteed to push their BK Kids Meal sales up a notch.

When the Five do eventually fail…enter: the panda.

It’s easy to cast aspersions on any celebrity who’s ever sunk low enough to host a Nickelodeon awards show, but I have to give Jack Black credit: what he does, he does extremely well. His quote-unquote “adult comedy” roles can be grating in the wrong dosage (his IMDb entry lists far too many examples to select at random), but — just as I found with School of Rock — when it comes to kid-level entertainment, he’s like the cool uncle who knows exactly what the kids want, but who knows better than to bore the grownups who had to drive them to the party. He never quite sinks to the level of whining or self-pity we’ve come to expect and bemoan from the other clueless Chosen Ones of cinema. If anything, his very cluelessness gives him a Homer Simpson-level degree of physical invulnerability that’s vital to surviving the final battle, as well as a degree of emotional vulnerability when the moral of the story predictably arrives. Po is dumb, but smart enough to know he’s dumb. He’s clumsy, but he learns to recover from his fumbles. And yeah, he’s fat, and he stays fat — he IS a panda, after all — but he adapts despite it.

I entered the theater with no intention of liking this film, assuming it would be the same sort of clichéd It’s-funny-because-he’s-FAT! shtick that used to tick me off back in junior high and high school, a time when I actually weighed more than I do now. I came away laughing at the gags, awed by the meleés — probably easier to discern at IMAX size than they will be on scrunched-up home video — and even a little heartwarmed by the post-credits epilogue.

As I write this, early box office results indicate Panda’s opening weekend has outgrossed the opening weekends of all but two of its summer competitors to date. I’m glad to see it’s drawn an audience in such a crowded market (I assume it’s chiefly the underserved under-13 demographic), and I’m really glad it managed to do so before the much-ballyhooed Wall*E juggernaut steamrolls into the cineplexes (I’d wager huge that I’m the only man on Earth who’s found its trailers a bit…well, lacking). I just hope that everyone else in my own demographic hasn’t already written off the big fat panda. It may fall short of being, as Po ascribes in his dream sequence, “OVEREXPOSURE TO PURE AWESOMENESS!” but as animated films about China go, it sure beats the almonds out of Mulan.

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