There's a long-standing tradition of porting successful animated movies to ongoing television series, with mixed results. DreamWorks recently delivered the manic Penguins of Madagascar, and now Nickelodeon is bringing Kung Fu Panda to the screen as a series. Think about this: Penguins is bringing 13 million viewers a week. Granted, they're 2-11 years old, but it's still a pretty impressive number. I expect Panda can bring even bigger numbers. Certainly my son will be thrilled. Now he'll have two reasons to watch Nick (he's in love with iCarly).

He dragged me to the movie, and I was ready to write it off as horrible before it started because I didn't like the title. It was a little too goofy. But the movie was infectious in its joy. The expanded cast of characters leaves to a great deal of potential, and the panda Po himself is so ridiculous as a kung fu master you can't help but enjoy it. And now I can force him to stop watching the horrible Skunk Fu! to get his anthropomorphic martial arts fix.