Unexpectedly chosen to fulfill an ancient prophecy and train in the art of kung fu, giant panda Po (above, voice by Jack Black) begins his study under Master Shifu (below, voice by Dustin Hoffman) in Kung Fu Panda.

DREAMWORKS

Fast, outlandish and wonderfully zany, Kung Fu Panda is a wacky trip to a Chinese Wonderland where a clumsy, chubby panda with martial arts dreams gets to live out his fantasy and become the masterful Dragon Warrior.

This wild ride through an electric-colored world is a perfect marriage of inventive computer animation, captivating story and richly drawn characters that pull you into this magical tale of Po (voice by Jack Black). Po may have many self-doubts about his true worth, but in the end he discovers his innate abilities and that his hero lies within himself.

Kung Fu Panda is the story of how this bumbling panda, who works in his father’s noodle shop, rises from obscurity (literally when he accidentally rides skyward in a chair that’s hitched to a string of Roman candles) and “falls into” his destiny when the exploding fireworks deposit him in the middle of a sacred ceremony where the new Dragon Warrior is about to be chosen. The sage old turtle Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), who is the revered inventor of kung fu, sees Po’s arrival as a sign from heaven and handpicks him for the role.

This does not sit well with the pantheon of kung fu immortals — Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Crane (David Cross), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Monkey (Jackie Chan) — who expect one of them to be named the Dragon Warrior. The so-called “Furious Five” are revered by Po himself (he has all their action figures in his bedroom) and Po’s off-the-cuff selection as Dragon Warrior surprises no one more than Po himself.

His selection especially infuriates the jealous luminous-eyed Tigress, who had expected the honor to go to her, as well as the martial arts guru, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), who had spent long months training the “Furious Five” in the dazzling feats that would win them the Dragon Warrior mantle and the Dragon Scroll, which is supposed to contain all the secrets of kung fu.

Nothing is presented straightforwardly in this upside-down world where, amusingly, Po’s fuddy-duddy noodle shop-owning father, Mr. Ping (James Hong), is not a panda but a goose. “There is something I have been meaning to tell you,” Mr. Ping says as he prepares to tell his panda son about their relationship later in the film. Hilariously, however, it’s not about how a goose is the father of a panda. For Mr. Ping’s life revolves around nothing more than a big bowl of noodles. “We’re noodle folk,” he tells his son. “Broth runs through our veins.”

Perhaps because of that, Po himself has as many misgiving about his new title as the Dragon Warrior as does his father, the dismissive “Furious Five” and especially Master Shifu, who is out to stop the newly crowned Dragon Warrior before he even gets started. That leads to a wildly funny romp as Po tries desperately to keep up with the “Furious Five” in their martial arts training, diving through rings outfitted with sharp talons, sidestepping a booby-trapped floor where flames can burst from anywhere. It doesn’t help that Po has no confidence in himself, although Oogway sees much more promise lurking beneath Po’s pot-bellied exterior and even Master Shifu discovers a secret that will unlock Po’s mastery of kung fu.

Lurking behind all this is the sinister presence of Tai Lung (Ian McShane), a snarling snow leopard. He was once Master Shifu’s star pupil, until he went bad and is now chained in the bowels of a grim prison. But not for long. The clever Tai Lung hatches an escape plan that’s carried out in a rollicking sequence in which he frantically jumps from one falling stalactite to another as he makes his getaway. Later he will go against Po himself in a nimble flight of fancy sequence that’s set on a collapsing rope footbridge spanning a deep chasm. Later the battle continues across the shattering tile roofs of Chinese pagodas, at one point finding Po on bamboo stilts playing Hide the Dragon Scroll under some overturned woks.

Kung Fu Panda is a raucous, daring ride kept racing along at breakneck speed in its wilder moments by co-directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne. But it’s made accessible by its touches of whimsy and the quiet moments in the screenplay by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger that detail the past histories of and relationships between its menagerie of animal characters. Especially good are the gentle moments between the doubting Po and Oogway, who tries to give the panda confidence, and those between Po and Master Shifu, who comes to realize that the way to a panda’s heart is through his stomach.

*****Kung Fu Panda

Voices: Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, David Cross, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Ian McShane, Randall Duk Kim, James Hong, Michael Clarke Duncan, Dan Fogler.

Rated: PG, contains violence.

mjanuson@projo.com