Kung Fu Panda Kicks Butt

Critics love Dreamworks' latest animate tale

(NEWSER) - Dreamwork’s latest animated romp, How to Train Your Dragon, is earning nearly unanimous critical praise—it’s currently at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes . Here’s what they’re saying:

• The story’s pretty conventional, but writer-directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois (Lilo & Stitch) “make funny, touching, sublime entertainment out of it,” writes Peter Travers of Rolling Stone . “Kid stuff? Maybe.” But it’ll “charm your socks off.”

Film tells of burlap robot battling through frightening world

(NEWSER) - The creepy tale of 9, which depicts a burlap-bodied robot’s (Elijah Wood) quest for his origins while battling bad guys in a post-apocalyptic world, looks incredible—but its script leaves something to be desired.

• “Long on imaginative design but less substantial in narrative, this dreary story of fighting the power is more numbing than thought-provoking,” writes Claudia Puig in USA Today.

Dreamworks' 3-D stunner stuck with one-dimensional storyline

(NEWSER) - Monsters Vs. Aliens looks amazing on screen, but grownups may find the thin jokes and the storyline of Dreamworks' animated spoof of '50s flicks a little grating, say critics.

• James Rocchi, Redbox: The movie "has amazing 3D, solid gags, wacky concepts and great animation; I just wish that at some point along the way someone had been as passionate about the story as they were about the spectacle."

Dazzlingly creepy stop-motion animation conjures up children's worst fears

(NEWSER) - Coraline is an eerie marvel of stop-motion animation guaranteed to give little kids nightmares, say critics. The story of a young girl—voiced by Dakota Fanning—who stumbles into a strange parallel universe where life seems almost too good to be true is a "dazzling, delightfully dark children's movie," Rafer Guzman writes in Newsday. More»

Too many subplots in Mouse's tale

(NEWSER) - The Tale of Despereaux is a beautiful movie. It looks “like an illuminated manuscript come to life,” writes Adam Markovitz in Entertainment Weekly, its visuals obviously inspired by Flemish artists. “Too bad the story’s such a mess.” At the heart of the story is the titular heroic mouse (ably voiced by Matthew Broderick), but it’s weighed down by so many subplots that, says Roger Ebert, it “threatens to make Gormenghast seem straightforward.” More»