电影:《功夫之王》/ Movie: The Forbidden Kingdom

我早上一边锻炼身体，一边看电影。
我最近看了一部电影，叫做《功夫之王》。
是关于很喜欢功夫电影的一个美国人的。
这个年轻人竟然在古代的中国醒来。
在那里他需要找到美猴王。

看电影以前，我以为故事会很好，
因为《西游记》就是电影的灵感。
虽然故事原来不太好，但是电影值得看，
因为李连杰和成龙都表演。
这是他们一起表演的唯一的电影。

In the mornings I like to watch movies while working out. Recently I saw a movie called The Forbidden Kingdom. It's about an American who really likes kung fu movies. This young man unexpectedly wakes up in ancient China. There he has to find the Monkey King.

Before seeing the movie, I thought the plot would be better than it was, because the movie was inspired by Journey to the West. Although it turned out to be not very good, the movie is still worth seeing because both Jet Li and Jackie Chan are in it. This is the only movie the two have performed in together.

电影：功夫熊猫 / Movie: Kung Fu Panda

我看了两次！第二次是在IMAX电影院的。
虽然我觉得电影的故事不太好，
我觉得动画很好看。
中国风景他们画得很漂亮。
I saw it twice, the second time in IMAX. Although I didn't think the story was that good, I thought the animation was good. The scenery of China was very pretty.

Pros: scenery, lack of bodily-function humor, decent female characters, kung fu!
Cons: (granted, most of these are shared by many other American children's movies): too much physical slapstick, lame psychological excuses (the panda eats too much because he's unhappy!), villain with a British accent.

我和一些中国人讨论这部电影。
多数喜欢，但是觉得有点奇怪。
一来，熊猫很难看。中国人画的熊猫都很可爱。
I talked to some Chinese people about the movie. Most of them liked it, but thought it a bit strange. First, the panda is ugly. Pandas drawn by Chinese people are all cute.
(Compare also Japan's Tarepanda. Know of other cute pandas? Please leave a comment.)

二来，熊猫的父亲怎么是鸭子？
Second, how can the panda's father be a duck (or goose)?
(The Shanghai Daily mocks a lawsuit brought against DreamWorks over this.)

我的看法是，在美国很多孩子不像他们的父母。
美国白人常常抱养从非洲或者亚洲来的孩子。
如果父亲和母亲的种族不一样，孩子可能不像他们。
The way I see it, in the US, lots of children don't look like their parents. Caucasian Americans often adopt children from Africa or Asia. Or if a mother and father are of different races, the child may not look much like them. So I think Americans have less trouble accepting this sort of thing.

三来，蛇是电影的一个英雄。蛇应该是坏蛋。

Third, a snake is one of the movie's heroes. Snakes should be bad guys.

虽然我也想不出动画中好蛇的角色，

但是五位功夫高手的那些动物都代表传统的武术路。

Although I can't think of a good snake character in a movie either, the animals of the "Furious Five" represent traditional martial arts styles. This is even explained in one of the trailers (use the widget above to view). For me, this nifty touch overrides the connotations of the specific animals.

(Any one know any good guy snake characters?)

Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion of the movie.

Language note: 熊猫 xiōngmāo "panda" is a compound of the characters for "bear" and "cat".

Sometimes also called 大熊猫 dàxiōngmāo, roughly analogous to Eng. "giant panda".

Chinese you can learn from the movie:
The panda's kung fu master is called "Shifu" (although it's pronounced poorly in the film), that is 师傅 shīfu "master".
The elder master, who is a tortoise, is called "Oogway", that is 乌龟 wūguī "tortoise".