Hollywood panda comedy charms China

Kung Fu Panda, the Hollywood hit comedy, is prompting roars of laughter and bouts of soul-searching in China, where the filmmaking community is asking why they cannot get as much smileage out of the country's national symbol.

Despite nationalist calls for a boycott, critics, directors, classical artists and countless bloggers have given two thumbs up to the story of a chubby panda who dreams of becoming a martial arts superhero.

It is at the top of the box office charts, having taken more than $20m (£10m) since its release late last month, and continues to play to packed houses in the country's tightly regulated cinema industry.

Such is its popularity that a parliamentary advisory body on cultural affairs debated last week why a film that draws on so many Chinese symbols and settings could be made more successfully by Hollywood than by domestic studios.

According to the Xinhua news agency, the panel concluded there were too many controls and too few producers willing and able to take the risks involved in making such a film.

"Although there is no secret ingredient to filmmaking success, the government ought to relax its oversight," the standing committee of the Chinese people's political consultative congress was quoted as saying. "Opening more space for Chinese artists would allow more innovation, ultimately giving China greater cultural influence abroad."

Directed by Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, Kung Fu Panda mixes Hollywood's hi-tech effects and star power with traditional Chinese culture, including elements of landscape painting, architecture, classical mythology, acupuncture, modern slang and the symbolic characters of the crane, snake, monkey, praying mantis and tiger - all styles of wushu (kung fu). The initially bungling lead character, Po, is an amusingly sympathetic figure who proves himself to be above mockery.

Hollywood's use of a panda was criticised by the contemporary artist Zhao Bandi, who uses the animal as a motif in his own work. On his blog, Zhao called on his compatriots to shun the movie because it profited from a national symbol so soon after the Sichuan earthquake.

Others have called for a boycott because the DreamWorks studio behind the film is partly owned by Steven Spielberg, who upset many when he quit as an artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympic games over China's links to Sudan. But such criticism has been drowned out by the roars of laughter, often followed by self-questioning.

One blogger, Mu, said on the Sina website: "They manage to mix the Chinese elements into the film so naturally that we cannot criticise the story as too simple. What's more, they make everyone in the audience laugh without end. Although the 'theft' of the Chinese symbol of the panda gives us pain, at least it makes the Chinese movie industry consider the question why we are always one step behind in globalisation's war of creation?"

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaK%2Bfp7mle5FpZ3Fnmqq5cHyWaJqhoZ6We7a%2FwA%3D%3D