Will Jack Black survive 'Kung Fu Panda'?

Robin Williams still has done serious roles after he jumped to the family movies. Look at One Hour Photo.

Mike Myers seems to be getting back to his old self with Love Guru & the upcoming Austin Powers sequel.

I despise this kind of twaty writing full of overwrought, glib sentences that are just barely grammatically correct. I literally feel sick to my stomach right now and ashamed for actually reading the whole article. What a pile of puke. This ditzbag actually uses "a" and "The" successively. What a complete and utter twat.

This report is nothing more than a op-ed piece from an amateur journalist who obviously does not understand the entertainment industry. Poorly done and researched!

Dan

1992's Aladdin was the beginning of the end for Robin Williams????? Didn't he win an Oscar in 1997 for his role in Good Will Hunting? Do the research first, formulate your opinion based on what you discover and then write the piece.

Obviously, Linda Homes doesn't have kids. Let me tell you - if I'm gonna spend my money & my time at a kids' movie...I want to be entertained. And what Jack Black, Robin Williams, Ben Stiller, et al bring with them to a kids' movie...is adult humor. They have all provided entertainment that appeals to both children AND adults (who by the way are the ones paying for the tickets and merchandise)...I APPRECIATE the fact that they try to provide something for everyone...and I for one, have found that I respect those actors even more after hearing them in an animated feature...and would be even more likely to see them in a serious movie next.

The author of this article has NO CLUE about this topic. It was one of the stupidest articles I've read...but I guess she proves the old saying..."if you can't ACT...write critiques!" LOL

WOW, I just have to say that this writer is a storon. It's called entertainment, not reality. I would rather watch an animated movie than most of the dreck that is out there now. I have no children and I'm middle aged, but I will go to the movies to see an animated film and the many times I've gone to matinees the theater will be filled with adults. You don't have to have a child with you to see a children's movie. They entertain, make us laugh and generally give us a couple hours of time off to just enjoy something fun. Lighten up

whoever wrote this has some screws loose. I have never heard of one incident when parents wont let their kids have something with Mike Myers in the house because of Shrek. Thats just stupid.
Stupid article.

Yeah - I really hope for Jack's sake that he doesn't fall into the trap of earning over $10,000,000 per film like Mike Myers did for Shrek 2 and beyond. That would be a terrible price to pay to not be taken as seriously on the stand-up comedian circuit.

This author seems to hate cartoons and kids with a bizarre and misplaced passion. Who wouldn't want to do a cartoon? Big payday, little work, enough said.

This author seems to hate cartoons and kids with the same bizarre and misplaced passion. Who wouldn't want to do a cartoon? Big payday, little work, enough said. And to add to the above lists, Jolie (and number of times) and Brad Pitt (Sinbad) have done cartoons, and Hollywood's royal couple don't seem to be hurting.

I just don't get it. The article is definitely skewed and I am wondering if the average fan truly gives a crap. I don't. This article should be limited to those who make a living at tracking the careers of once edgy comedians. I got halfway through this article and really began questioning why I was reading it in the first place. WHO CARES. Well, people are probably wondering why, if I don't care, do I continue to ramble on.....I am killing time...it is Friday! PEACE!

Perhaps it's not the mere act of an actor or comedian voicing an animated movie that impacts their career but where their career was before they took that role that plays a part in their success after. For example, Tom Hanks was a well respected comedic actor before Toy Story and has continued to be one of Hollywood's most talented actors. Most of all he is diverse, unlike Jack Black. The whole I'm-a-zany-fat-guy routine is all he pretty much knows how to do, or has been able to show us. Robin Williams and Jim Carrey are also in a similar category and they always seem to be in character-- anyone watch an interview with either of these two?

All in all, people who like Jack Black will dig the movie, I won't see because I feel like I am watching the same movie over and over.

And calling the writer a "twat" probably won't help anyone's credibility.

What a load of crap. What makes these so called "reviewers" any more adept to picking and choosing than the regular "Joe"? I've made it a habit to disregard ANYthing these folks spout! They're getting paid for an opinion....and we all have those!

I think the thing that bothers me the most about this article isn't the poorly researched or hastily pasted together argument, but the tone of unrelenting snobbery about kid's movies and animated ones in particular. That is one of my biggest problems with a lot of critical views of entertainment: things have to be serious to be worth looking at. I agree that some thought needs to go into a film or a television show or any form of media, and I will agree that that doesn't always happen, but to look down your nose at an entire medium, not because of anything inherant in the medium itself, but only because of the popular perception of how it's been used, is just lazy, boorish, and elitist. Animation as a medium (yes, it's a medium, not a genre), is thought of as only children's entertainment in the US because for decades, that's all it's been used for, but that doesn't mean it's all it CAN be used for, as places like Russia, the Czech Republic, France, and Japan can attest to. While not the mode for the most critically acclaimed of films (with a few possible exceptions), the market for them is far more accepting in these countries than this one, and it always stymies me how so-called intellectuals can disregard a unique artform as nothing but brainless eyecandy for overstimulated grade-schoolers. As a medium it has infinite potential, something other countries explore to a much greater degree than we do here-- the only US company trying to do something different that springs to mind is Pixar, and they're still staying in the realm of family entertainment, they're just pushing to include every member of the family in that equation instead of the 10-and-under crowd.

Frankly, I think the live-action studios need to take a page from Pixar's book when crafting their family entertainment as well-- not that all kid's entertainment needs to be geared for adults as well, but that there's more to entertaining kids than just fart jokes, slapstick humor, and making adults look ridiculous. Kids have more than one level, too, and they can be engaged emotionally just like adults can. Kids movies don't have to be brainless entertainment just for the sake of getting them to shut up for an hour and a half, and it's a real shame that studios seem to have forgotten that, but it's even more of a shame that we've stopped expecting anything more from them. How no one can recognize the potential in either the animation medium or the arena of children's entertainment is incredibly disheartening to someone who, at the age of thirty, is still as enchanted by the imagination and creativity that these films are capable of.