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It’s a pretty family friendly DVD week. The DVDs releasing Tuesday include “Kung Fu Panda” and “Get Smart”.

Kung Fu Panda releases Tuesday on DVD

Kung Fu Panda

There are lots of celebrity voices in the latest Dream Works animated feature to hit DVD. In “Kung Fu Panda” we have Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, and Jackie Chan all supplying the distinctive sounds of the characters. The film tells the story of a panda who dreams of greatness among the kung fu community. When the great Shifu announces that he will name the next chosen one, Po the panda gets caught up in the mix and must learn that he really does have what it takes to kung fu. The film succeeds in drawing in kids and adults alike, and it’s likely that it sticks to its roots. As one reviewer says,

In the end, what charms the most about “Kung Fu Panda” is that it doesn’t feel as if it’s trying to be a live-action film. It’s an animation through and through, starting with the stunningly beautiful opening dream sequence, a graphically bold hand-drawn interlude rendered by James Baxter that looks like an animated woodblock print with slashes of black and swaths of oxblood red. This opener is so striking and so visually different from most mainstream American animations that it takes a while to settle into the more visually familiar look of the rest of the movie. And while nothing that comes afterward really compares to it, a volley of arrows that falls down like red rain and a delicate swirl of pink petals come delightfully close.

Get Smart

Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway star in this present day take on the 1960s television series about a clumsy spy who happens to get it right. Carell plays Maxwell Smart, a top analyst in CONTROL who has dreams of becoming a field agent. He gets his chance when KAOS attacks and kills most of the other agents. It’s up to Smart and Agent 99 (Hathaway) to save the day, and they do just that, if clumsily and with a few laughs along the way. Unfortunately for the film, it falls a little flat. Sometimes television series are better left on the small screen. Critics’ statements include,

We sit back and wait for the laughs. Which come pretty slow and infrequent, though Carell does his straight-faced best to act out the A-Z of Hilarious.

See the trailers for the movies below.

Photos: WENN