Po's unlikely passion for kung fu intervenes, leading him out of the noodle shop and into the metaphoric hot pot, whereupon he kicks, grunts and groans toward his destiny amid the usual clutter of colorful sidekicks and one nasty foe (Ian McShane, grrr).
The oversized Cat with his two colorful sidekicks Thing One and Thing Two (Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern?) is a lord of misrule, a projection of his child narrator's unconscious who reflects the emotion of Yeats's "The Second Coming," unleashing "mere anarchy...upon the world" simply out of the boredom reflected in the first lines of the book, which begins thusly, "The sun did not shine.
You've got your white hat, you're black hat, wide vistas of natural splendor, maybe an ornery sidekick with some colorful phrases and a dashing star on a horse.
Save for an elderly ustad, who presides over the ceremony with a colorful staff and a bagpipe-playing sidekick, there is little pomp or ceremony: When the sun sets and the muezzin calls worshippers to maghrib, the fourth daily prayer of Islam, the Kushti crowd disperses as quickly as it gathered.
Its cast of handsome humans, gruesome space-alien villains, comical sidekicks and cute little mascots (mostly attired in colorful mock-18th century nautical garb) will live on, for the next few weeks at least, as plastic figurines distributed in fast-food children's meals.
Jeff Garlin, who plays Larry David's affable manager-sidekick in "Curb Your Enthusiasm," knows his own strengths: watching and listening patiently to more colorful performers and then responding with resigned, understated outrage.
"Everyone needs a sidekick.
"Ahmass was his sidekick.
