Ska-toosh!

“Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend.”

I finally saw “Kung Fu Panda” this weekend, which leads me to ask the inevitable question: is it so wrong for a woman to love a red panda? Because I am STONE IN LOVE with Master Shifu. He’s so stern, so tragic – and yet so cute and cuddly. And that happened even before I found out that his character is voiced by Dustin Hoffman.

For many reasons, I was totally against the Bug seeing this movie when it was released. It’s not like he needs more inspiration to run face-first into a brick wall, swing from the ceiling fan, or roundhouse-kick the refrigerator door closed. He and his little posse at pre-school are regularly separated from each other at least once a day for various pre-school infractions, like pretending to be cheetahs and hunting down innocent toddlers, or scaling the chain-link fence in a miniature version of “Prison Break”. The last time it happened, the Bug informed me quite seriously that he and his best friend DinoBoy were forbidden from playing with each other “FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES!”

Plus, it’s clear that the majority of kid’s movies and television shows are nothing but a marketing vehicle for cheap plastic stuff that reproduces exponentially as soon as it reaches our living room and makes me despair for the future of our planet. Yeah, yeah, I know, you’ve heard it all before. That’s just the kind of mean old hard-ass mom I am.

Still, no matter how much I try to stop him from seeing the relentless commercial drivel aimed at marketing garbage to kids, he somehow finds out about it. “Captain Jack Sparrow!” he crows in the cereal aisle. “Darth Vader! Power Rangers!” It drives me crazy, and I vow on a daily basis that I am not going to let my child be sucked into anything that is created entirely to perpetuate Happy Meals.

And then I made the mistake of going out with some friends for a single afternoon, and my husband took him to see “Kung Fu Panda” without a second thought. See what happens? You let down your guard for a split-second, and the terrorists have their way.

From that day forth, I’ve had to listen to endless discussions about Master Shifu and Tai Lung and the one-hundred-twenty-fifty-four rhinos he massacred, and above all, Master Tigress, because apparently Angelina Jolie’s voice alone is enough to seduce a four and three-quarters year old into worshipping her. I’ve witnessed countless demonstrations of kung fu poses and heard the word “Skatoosh!” more times than I’ve heard Sarah Palin say “Thanks but no thanks.”

So this weekend, our local theater-pub was showing a second run of “Kung Fu Panda” and the Bug, with his sixth sense for cartoon features, somehow found out, and suddenly I was engaged in a vicious conspiracy to see this movie with him and BFF DinoBoy and DinoBoy’s little sister and their mom. And off we went, but not before stopping in at Value Village to find a Master Tigress and Master Monkey for DinoBoy.

We got to the theater, where the Bug and DinoBoy greeted each other as if they hadn’t seen each other since the Pleistocene, rather than 18 hours earlier at pre-school; in other words, they started talking loudly and simultaneously about totally different things. Plastic Masters were distributed, kids were settled in their seats, and the movie began.

And I was hooked. It’s been a while since I’ve loved a kid’s movie the way I enjoy some of the old Disney movies. I liked “Ratatouille” and “WALL-E”, but seeing them with an actual child made me realize how much kid’s movies are directed toward adults these days. And if not, they seem dumbed-down or facile, underestimating what kids can and can’t handle. It really is hard to strike just the right note in an animated film, which would be somewhere between snarky and sappy. “Toy Story” did it, I think. So does “The Lion King”, “Ice Age”, and “Aladdin”. Another favorite of mine is the little-known “The Iron Giant”. I thought “The Wild” was terrible, like “Madagascar” on a bad acid trip. And some movies, like “Cars” – possibly the most boring movie ever after “The English Patient” – aren’t interesting for kids OR adults.

But “Kung Fu Panda” met all of my inner child’s requirements in spades, and most of my adult ones too. It was like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Panda”, hitting all the right notes at the right moments, and some of the animation was downright stunning. It’s not brilliant or new, but kids don’t want innovation; it’s their bored parents that need it. All my son really wants to see is some animals doing crazy shit. And if a big fat panda can become a Dragon Warrior, surely I can drag my sorry ass to a Pilates class once a week.

I left the theater yelling “SKATOOSH!” with DinoBoy and the Bug and feeling like a kid again. “Isn’t that the bestest movie ever?” the Bug demanded on the way home, clearly thrilled that his mother had done the unthinkable: changed her mind.

I just shouldn’t have tried that split-kick in the parking lot.