Alphabetical Movie – Kung-Fu Panda I & II

One night, my youngest was in the mood to watch Kung-fu Panda.  It was a Friday night and the entire family was hanging out and enjoying unstructured time.  We told him that he could watch whatever he wanted and he said he wanted to watch Kung-fu Panda.

He was telling a lie.  it wasn’t a big lie.  But it was a lie that had consequences. And not to him.

Because, you see, he didn’t actually want to watch Kung-Fu Panda. He wanted to watch the Dreamworks video Jukebox extra on the disc.

And he didn’t really want to watch the whole video jukebox.  He wanted to watch the Cee Lo Green version of “Kung-Fu Fighting.”  He circled around it for a little while.  Pretended that he was interested in all the songs.  He watched “Car Wash” from Shark Tale and then he watched “I’m a Believer” from Shrek.  The he watched “Kung-Fu Fighting.”  And then he watched it again.  Aaaaaaannnnd “one more time,” he claimed.

He wasn’t finished. One more time was not what he meant.  He meant one more time for now.

Having worked his way through all the videos on Kung-fu Panda, he decided it was time to watch the videos on Kung-fu Panda II.

We were treated to blissful music from other Dreamworks films.  For a while.  We got to see musical snippets from Madagascar and from Shrek II and III.  But do you know what other song was on the DVD?

Of course you do.

They didn’t even come up with a different version of the song for Kung-fu Panda II! They just went with the same one from the first film.

Not that my son cared.  Because he loves that song.  He told us so.

In fact, he said he didn’t care because he was just going to watch that one video over and over and over again until bedtime.  Which was in an hour.

Having already told him that he would watch “whatever he wanted,” we were trapped.  We’d made our own bed and we were lying in it.  And no matter how hard we tried, that bed would not stop playing “Kung-fu Panda” by Cee Lo Green.

We tried to suggest that he should actually watch the movie.  He thought about it for a few moments and then laughed a little.  Nah, he told us, he’d rather just watch the video over and over again.

I suppose we could have left him and gone….anywhere else.  Gary, Indiana Maybe? But he was actually being pretty cute.  He’d sing the song and engage in charmingly bad Kung-fu moves while singing the song and I really should have videoed it because that might have made the evening a bit more bearable.

I came up with that idea just now.  Dammit.

Kids are like that sometimes.  They get obsessed with something to the point of ignoring all other things.  They need to ingest it completely.  As a parent, you hope that you aren’t around when they do that because if they are, your dreams will be invaded by endless repetitions of “Kung-Fu Fighting” by Cee Lo Green.

As ours were several weeks ago.  As they still are every now and again.

Because as you well know, once you get that song in your head, it is pretty much impossible to get it out again.

Hey Cee Lo Green:  In your own words,  “Fuck You.”