DreamWorks Animation’s latest film entry is getting an unusual amount of positive reviews for the studio, currently cloking in at 82% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Jim Hill calling Kung Fu Panda “one fun summer flick.” And in a recent interview with Jam! Showbiz, Duston Hoffman recalls how he was initially hesitant to join the animated film’s cast; still, he relented, agreeing to hear the DreamWorks team out. But sketches and character designs did little to assuage his concerns that the wise, gruff Shifu was merely two-dimensional. Eventually his interest was piqued when filmmakers described the character — a red panda, for those keeping track of the movie’s menagerie — as “a prick,” Hoffman says. “So that makes anybody three dimensional. And then they said by the end he has an insight (into himself) which is by definition a third dimension.” Still, Hoffman, ever the pragmatist, hedged his bet, inspired by Mike Myers, who famously convinced the same studio to let him re-voice the original Shrek when he was displeased with his work. “I had a gentleman’s agreement with the animators that if I didn’t like my performance, I could do it over again.” If the erratic workload — a day’s work and then three months later you’re called back — frustrated Hoffman, it also affirmed his appreciation for the genre’s painstaking craftsmanship. Far from the cartoons he knew as a kid, he says he now considers animation “an art-form” on par with other forms of filmmaking.