Metacritic reviews

Light and goofy, yet the fight scenes, which are the heart of the film, are lickety-split mad fun.

The stroke of genius is, of course, the film's hero -- the big, lovable bear that is the Chinese panda.

Everything about Kung Fu Panda is a little better, a little sharper, a little funnier than the animated run of the mill.

This is a solid family film material, although one suspects the children will get a little more out of it than their parents.

Not one of the great recent animated films. The story is way too predictable, and truth to tell, Po himself didn't overwhelm me with his charisma. But it's elegantly drawn, the action sequences are packed with energy, and it's short enough that older viewers will be forgiving.

Thanks to a witty script and the recognizably goofy but absolutely earnest delivery of Black, Kung Fu Panda has a human soul, too.

Perfectly pleasant, very good-looking, modestly funny, dispiritingly unoriginal variant on the nerd-with-a-dream recipe that's been clobbered to death in animated films for at least a decade now.

Po (Black) may be an animated panda bear, but make no mistake: Deep down he's really just a nerd with a pop-culture obsession.

Though the film's simple story is squarely aimed at tots, DreamWorks' digitizers have referenced Eastern visual styles -- everything from delicate Chinese screens to flashy Japanese anime -- to enliven the look of the film.

A nice looking but heavily formulaic DreamWorks animation entry.