By Dave McCoy
MSN Movies Lead Editor

No cute, self-absorbed intro today. No cheap shots at Paramount for debuting "Kung Fu Panda" at the most serious film festival on the planet. Let's just cut to the chase, shall we?

"Kung Fu Panda" (playing out of competition) is the best non-Pixar animated film I've seen since "Happy Feet." It doesn't have that film's depth or subtext or, honestly, originality. But it makes up for its predictable plot and tired underdog message with some incredible visceral energy, an unadulterated love for its oddball characters and genre, and, most importantly, a completely random, off-the-wall, gave-me-the-giggles sense of humor. I'm not saying there were bongs in the filmmaker room ... actually, yes ... yes, I am saying that. Look, it features the resin-stained vocal talents of Jack Black and David Cross. Hellll-o?

You want an example? Sure, but first let me set it up. The movie is a formulaic martial arts genre picture, only animated. The major difference is that every character is an animal. It's set in a small village at the base of a kung fu temple in China where pigs (my favorite one sports a 5 o'clock shadow ... yeah, so I'm easily amused) and bears and all sorts of furry or flying critters commingle, sans humans. Our protagonist is an obese (weight issues, uh, weigh heavy in this film) panda named Po, voiced by a laid-back Black, who spouts "awesome" a lot and basically plays his "High Fidelity" character if his obsession was kung fu instead of music. (Here comes that example.) Though he dreams of becoming a martial arts warrior, Po works with his dad at a noodle house. Oh, and his dad is a goose. Why? Who knows, dude! It works, bro. (If I could write the gurgling sound of water being sucked through a bulbous contraption, here's where I'd insert it.)

Newcomers Mark Osborne and John Stevenson know they're directing something we've seen a million times -- panda wants to be a warrior and needs to look inside himself, get trained and save the village from a mean villain. Duh. So, these mad choices and jokes and sideways tone are key to the film's success -- as is their obvious adoration and respect for the martial arts genre. Why someone hasn't realized the connection between animation and martial arts before is beyond me (wish I'd thought of it). Is there much difference between the gravity-defying heroics of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and those you'd see in a Bugs Bunny cartoon? Hardly. Combining the two is a glorious match that creates some mesmerizing action scenes. Also impressive is the vocal talent these first-time directors landed: Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogen and Cross as kung fu wunderkinds, the Furious Five; Ian McShane as the evil leopard, Tai Lung; oh, and yeah, Dustin Hoffman as Master Shifu, who proves that not only does he overact on-screen but also in a vocal booth.

In terms of story, there isn't much new -- in fact, the screenwriters grabbed every character from "Star Wars"; watch it and you'll figure it out. However, it's great to see an animated film with cinema-history smarts, mainly driven by an adult sensibility, but with enough silly slapstick and cuddly creatures to make it 100 percent tot-friendly. Oh, and that jaded Cannes audience? It broke into massive applause as the final credits rolled. Were they piping smoke into the Lumiere Theatre? I'll never tell.

Memory Dances

Animation found another strange genre bedfellow with the Israeli feature (in competition) "Waltz With Bashir": documentary. Director Ari Folman sought to make a documentary about his military experience in the first Lebanon War in the early '80s; instead of using the same old talking heads and newsreel-flashback approach, he's created something thoroughly original and effective. "Bashir" is a documentary but looks like an LSD-dosed graphic novel. The protagonist, Ari, is plagued by feelings of unease, but his memory won't allow him to relive the atrocities of the war (especially the famous, horrendous Sabra and Shatila massacres). So he travels worldwide to interview former comrades and friends about the events to fill in his memory gaps. As tales are told, the film slips into dream and nightmare and portrays wartime as completely surreal and ridiculous and horrifying. Hallucinogenic images -- a man clinging to a gigantic floating woman, blood being swept from a vehicle, three naked, armed soldiers emerging from a river as if reborn -- paint a vision of war never quite shown by movies (it's firmly rooted in memory in brief, extraordinary nonlinear snatches of time). It's an angry antiwar howl fueled by Israeli guilt over a hideous event the film itself deems equal to Nazi behavior. When Ari's memory finally returns, it's no longer clouded by animation and dreams ... it's vividly, tragically real and unshakeable.

Darkness Falls

"We're such crazy babies, little monkey/We're so f---ed up, you and me"
-- Counting Crows, "Recovering the Satellites"

"How are you?" asks an older man of a young one in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's potential masterpiece, "Three Monkeys." Unblinking, without self-pity, the young man says, "Struggling to survive."

If there's a motif here at Cannes the first few days, that's it. Except for a bunch of kung fu critters, these first few days have been emotionally dour indeed. We had "Blindness" and "Waltz With Bashir" on Day 1. Then came Day 2: In the often airless, stifling Argentinean film "Lion's Den" (in competition), we follow a pregnant murderer into a woman's prison that houses mothers and their children. The opening film of Un Certain Regard (in theory, films edgier than the competition films, though that is debatable) was "Hunger," a mostly dialogue-free (save one 22-minute soliloquy presented in one single shot) dramatization of IRA member Bobby Sands' 66-day hunger strike and subsequent death.

Over at the Director's Fortnight, the guerilla sideshow is celebrating its 40th anniversary (for more on what went down in 1968 and how it changed the Cannes Film Festival, read our Cannes history piece) and brought back maverick Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski. Skolimowski is a major figure of Eastern European cinema (if you haven't seen "Deep End" or "Moonlighting," stop reading this crap and go rent them now) who hasn't made a film in 17 years. Now 70, he's back at Cannes with "Four Nights With Anna" and gave the speech of the festival so far: "I said to myself that I wouldn't come back here with a mediocre film, like the last one I made. So, I brought you this. I want to say to my friends: I am back ... and to the people who aren't my friends: I am back." Indeed. The film feels like it was ripped out of 1971 and I mean that in a good way: It's spare and oddly funny and warm and creepy (that is to say: Polish); it's also timeless. It's a really sad, touching film about, well, stalking. A lonely crematorium worker (you're laughing already, eh?) watches and longs for a nurse who lives across the way. Each night, he enters her room through a window, and each night, he gets more and more bold. I don't want to say any more or divulge motivations, suffice it to say your empathy moves in strange ways throughout "Anna." Welcome back, Jerzy, indeed.

And then there's "Three Monkeys." It's the film of the festival so far, and I'd be surprised if I see anything in the next week that moves me as much -- though I hope to. Turkish writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan broke onto the scene two years ago at Cannes with "Climates," an interesting film about a rough relationship. He returns to familial matters here, but he digs much deeper. Eyup works as a driver for a political big shot. When the politician runs over a man, Eyup agrees to take the fall in exchange for a sizeable lump of cash. He leaves his obedient wife, Hacer, and listless son, Ismail, and heads off to prison. While there ... let's just say his family changes -- Hacer gets lonely, Ismail discovers his Freudian side and Eyup's former boss gets horny. And all events are secret.

The title alludes to the visual proverb -- "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." This family refuses to acknowledge dire situations and decisions (and one powerfully lingering ghost) aware to everyone. In so doing, the widely known, but unspoken, leads it toward destruction. But Ceylan's approach expresses the title literally as well (this guy has killer chops and understands the essential relationship between style and content): He shoots these three characters as if they were trapped in a cage. Rarely, if ever, do we see someone not framed and confined by a door, a window, bars, ceilings and, ultimately, Ceylan's claustrophobic frame itself. And as the film extends, the physical spaces get tighter and tighter. What makes us different from animals is the ability to learn from our mistakes; the question lingers at the end of this film whether these three monkeys can do that. And the cyclical nature of the plot gives you a big clue to the answer. This is devastating stuff that leaves you gasping for air ... or at least open space -- which is a luxury at Cannes when you shuffle like cattle from dark room to dark room, hour after hour, day after day ... 

Hey, look at that ... it just started raining. Interesting ...

A demain ...

Monday: We review the world premiere of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Plus, check out the  weekend wrap-up. 

Dave McCoy is lead editor for MSN Movies. He's filing daily dispatches from Cannes through May 25.

Are you and your tot excited to see "Kung Fu Panda"? What other film genre should get the animated treatment to freshen it up? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com

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