OK, I know I said I was going to watch the two Kung Fu Panda movies I hadn’t seen before catching the fourth one this weekend. And you know what? I did. I just didn’t get around to writing the review for Kung Fu Panda 3 yet. All I will say here is I rather liked it and leave it at that. Suffice to say, I did get out to see the fourth in the Kung Fu Panda series after having caught up with the sequels I just plain didn’t get around to before.
By the by, I have no plans to do anything like that for the Despicable Me movies I missed before the fourth movie in that series comes out.
Things are looking pretty good for Po (Jack Black). He’s the Dragon Warrior, his two dads Ping and Li (James Hong and Bryan Cranston) are running the noddle shop in the village together, and everyone loves him. Then Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman at his grumpiest) has news Po doesn’t want to hear: he needs to give up being the Dragon Warrior, choose a successor, and become the spiritual leader for the Valley of Peace. Po doesn’t know anything about that sort of thing and wants to keep things as they are. Fate seems to be leading him in that general direction too: a wily fox named Zhen (Awkwafina) seems intent to steal Po’s Staff of Wisdom, but she has news that Po finds interesting: Tai Lung (Ian McShane) is back! Or, he’s not.
Apparently, there’s a shapeshifting evil sorceress named The Chameleon (Viola Davis) who is terrorizing the metropolis of Juniper City. She’s able to turn herself into anyone, and she’s consolidating power in Juniper City, looking to move her influence across the rest of the known world. Po, feeling he can go out as the Dragon Warrior one last time, heads out with Zhen to take her down, both his dads following after a day or so. The Chameleon has plans, plans that involve Kung Fu, all of Po’s former adversaries, and a whole lot of world domination. Po had trouble defeating the likes of Tai Lung when it was just Tai Lung. Can he take on a whole army of the mightiest Kung Fu villains on his own, and will he still be the Dragon Warrior when all this is over?
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went into this. In my mind, Kung Fu Panda 3, much like Toy Story 3, seemed like a good place to end the series. I know that’s not how these things work. I just think it would have worked better that way. As it is, despite the promise of the premise, many of the past Kung Fu Panda characters are not really involved in this one. Aside from Tai Lung, none of Po’s previous enemies get to do more than sit in the background and look angry. Likewise, the Furious Five are essentially handwaved off as being somewhere else when the movie starts. I actually don’t mind that too much. I’m doubtful the movie had the budget to bring back Angelina Jolie, Gary Oldman, and maybe Jackie Chan, but the bad guys would have been a distraction–honestly Tai Lung says everything those characters need to say–and the Furious Five with the exception of Tigress don’t really add much to the story outside of the visual delights of their individual marital arts styles. As it is, if you’re a big Furious Five fan or something, they aren’t really in this one.
That said, this one was still pretty fun. Hong and Cranston’s characters make a decent comedy team, and Awkafina’s fox would make a nice addition if/when more sequels come along. There is a sense that the series is repeating a formula where Po has to learn to be more than he is, doesn’t want to, but then finds he’s actually good at it. That said, there some nice visual delights here as always, there’s a nice gag where no one in Juniper City knows who the Dragon Warrior is, and Jack Black is as always an enthusiastic presence making the most of what he has. Black seems to have a skill for that between this and The Super Mario Brothers Movie where he was, as always, the best thing in the movie. Here, though, he’s the lead, and that helps make what could have been another mediocre sequel a rather fun, if not spectacular, time.
Grade: B-
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