Don't Believe the Hype

Boring, long, and too preachy.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is an animation short that ties in with the first Kung Fu Panda films with Po the panda ropes in by Shifu to teach the philosophy of Kung Fu to a group of young bunnies at a martial arts school. However it is not the crash bang wallop of Kung Fu that Po teaches but the positive traits that each of the Furious Five developed.So you have flashbacks of the Furious Five and how they developed their skills and the virtues they developed. It avoids preachiness and younger viewers would be highly entertained.The animation is very good and up to feature film standard and they have attracted an all star cast for the voices.

The original film, despite it's silly ending, was at least one of DreamWorks Animation's stronger films with great characters, excellent Kung Fu action sequences, a compelling story, beautiful animation, and an epic music score from Hans Zimmer and John Powell. So, when I saw this short that continues where the first Kung Fu Panda left off, I thought it wouldn't be as good as the film. It turns out that it's a very entertaining short, although it doesn't have the same inspiring message that made it very solid.The story, while explaining the back-stories of the Furious Five really well, is a tad predictable in some parts; the humor isn't as strong as the movie and I expected it to be a bit longer like say 40 minutes so that it can explain the back-stories better. That's all I have to say about the flaws.Everything else is great. The CGI is fine, but it's traditional animation sequences of the Furious Five's backstories is what made this worth watching for me. It's so beautiful and the character designs from the movie are nicely detailed here. The voice acting is pretty good and although we only saw Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, and David Cross return, the voice actors for only four of the Furious Five including Tara Strong, Max Koch, Jessica DiCicco, and James Sie (Jackie from Jackie Chan Adventures) did a good job. The music score from Hans Zimmer, & John Powell (along with Henry Jackman), does retain the same tunes from the movie while using a lot of different stuff in it, which isn't a bad thing. The characters are still as likable as they were especially the young Furious Five warriors.Overall, Secrets of the Furious Five isn't as inspiring as the original film, but it proved to be a lot more entertaining than I imagined and I think those who haven't seen it should check it out.

As Dragon Warrior, Po has had to face many challenges but on this day he must face one that would intimidate any great warrior – training the newest recruit of bunnies in the way of kung-fu. Left alone to fend for himself by Shifu, Po finds his class are only interested in the fighting part of the art and are keen to get down to kicking one another as soon as possible. In order to educate them in the true ways of the art, Po tells them of the Furious Five and how they became masters by learning life lessons of patience, courage, confidence, self-control and compassion.As with the animated films from Pixar, Dreamworks included this short film on the Kung-Fu Panda DVD and I decided to give it a try. In a way it is a fitting inclusion to the main film because to my mind both the film and the short are enjoyable for what they are but at the same time are not quite up to the quality of the products produced by Pixar. With this film its main problem is that the plot is just too obvious in the moralising compared to some of the brilliant shorts from Pixar that can deliver the same message but are generally very inventive and clever. I didn't really get this here but, if you ignore this weakness of comparison then the short is still quite entertaining.It is not really ever hilarious but it does consistently amuse across the twenty minutes and it doesn't really ram the moral down your throat (although it does push it into your mouth). The animation is mixed – perhaps for financial reasons but it does work within the context of the short. The bits with Po and his class are of the same quality as in the main film but the stories that make up the majority of the running time are delivered in a more hand-drawn style that looks cheaper (because, by comparison, it is). However don't let this take away from how good it looks because it is still stylish – sort of like the animation that opens the main film albeit it not as striking or as well done as that. Each story is relatively straight forward with a moral at the end of each one but they do more or less work.The voice work is a little distracting though – not so much for what they do but more the obvious absences. Black and Hoffman are good, each reprising their voices in the main part of the short film – Black in particular puts a lot of energy into it, but the Furious Fives themselves not so much. Cross is good as Crane (probably having as many words as in the main film) but the others are mostly absent. Some of the characters are children in their stories so therefore it would not have been sensible to use adult voices but it is a bit strange why Chan or Rogen couldn't have found a bit of time to record the couple of lines needed for this – especially considering how few lines they had in the main film.Either way the short is solid and entertaining with a solid if obvious moral message for the kids (and bunnies). That said it does feel a bit lacking in inspiration and does give the impression that it was made because it had to be rather than made out of a good idea or passion for the project – a cynical view perhaps but it is hard not to feel that at points, not due to something the film does but things that similar films do so much better.

this is a short animated film dealing of course,with the furious five,from original Kung Fu Panda movie.i thought it was OK.it has some great lessons for kids,and it's kinda cute,especially the bunnies.minor spoiler****it's really a bunch of mini stories about the past of each of the furious five,in which each one learned a very important virtue.each member gets around five or six minutes each.***end of spoiler.anyway,this little short is fun and easy to watch for the kids,and entertaining enough for the grownups.they got quite a bit of info into the short running time,and none of the characters gets short changed in terms of screen time and story.for me,Kung Fu Panda:Secrets of the Furious Five is a 6/10