Kung Fu Panda

It's the middle of the monsoon season and yet, July had not seen too much of rain. If you remember, 3 years back, it had flooded on the 26th of July. As if someone had just reminded the weather goddess that she was forgetful and evil at the same time, it started raining yesterday night. It has carried on for most of today. This meant that I was grounded for most parts of the day.

Being grounded should have been fun. You know, I have a lot of stuff to do. Books, music, internet, tv etc. Despite all of this, I found a way to destroy the day by sleeping until noon. The only help that such an act of indiscretion led to was to save me the expense of a breakfast.

I heated up a cup of black coffee in the microwave and dived into the TOI. Nothing too interesting actually. The trust vote satire had given away to hollow promises of reforms and stuff. It took me hardly 7 minutes to reach the sports page and because of the encumbrance of rain at Colombo as well, even those pages didn't make me linger.

This meant that I was into Bombay Times way too early. There, I saw this preview for a very interesting movie. Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin star in 'Shorcut to Happiness'. Now, that was releasing on Friday. A quick run-through of the movie possibilities (including Hellboy 2) in my mind led me to the conclusion that I should, under any circumstance, watch 'Kung Fu Panda', the only interesting movie that I had not yet watched.

To cut the long story short, I found myself walking to Fun Republic through a heavy drizzle in the evening. Although the 'crush'ing experience the last time that I had ventured to watch a movie had something to do with my present endeavor, it was not the only reason.



And the movie, as all animated movies go these days, was very good. 4 stars out of 5. The voice-overs were exceptional and the screen play was tickling-funny. Sometimes I feel that the animated movies, sort of, have to be good. I mean, they can't go wrong. First of all, you can't hope to get away with cheesy animation in an 'animated' movie. Therefore, shoddy direction, acting etc are dispensed with. Because people who make animations tend to be people who watch cartoons and stuff (and because of that, they are cleverer and interesting) they make interesting, funny stories.

Conclusion: you really can't go wrong in making an animation movie. Well almost. You will go wrong if you are in Bollywood and you want to make one!