Kung-Fu Panda 20

No this isn’t a review of Transformers 3, but we did dedicate our last entire podcast to it. So if you want to hear my opinion on that movie listen here. Because the State of Origin is on tonight I decided just to do a quick review and that’s when I remembered that I saw  Kung-Fu Panda 2 the other day.

So if you don’t remember, Kung-Fu Panda was a great 2008 animated film, that had some good humor and lots of awesome kung-fu action. It start Jack Black before he became annoying and was just a great fun movie with something for the whole family. Kung-Fu Panda 2 is pretty much the exact same thing. Not saying that the story is the same, just that it gives you the exact same feeling of, “mmm, yeah, that was pretty good,” and you end up with a smile on your face. Always a good sign.

In the last movie we had the hero Po (Jack Black the panda) be chosen as the prophesied Dragon Warrior and so the movie was about him unlocking his potential as a great kung-fu master. This time round they have built on the story as Po is already the Dragon Warrior so from the get go he’s fighting along side the furious five (That’s five kung-fu masters not a Vinn Diesel movie). This is great because so many sequels feel the need to take away what the hero learnt in the last movie just to build it up again. Which I hate. But this time we move forward as Po is confronted with different conflicts and he must confront the demons of his past if he is to unlock inner peace. Jack Black learning inner peace… just go with it, it does make sense.

It has some very funny parts but at its core is a fun kung-fu action film and they actually do a lot with the kung-fu choreography. If you are a fan of martial art films at all, then this series is a must see. They not only create great fight scenes using animals but the effort that is put into each character and their own specific styles is amazing. This is most obvious when looking at the characters of the furious five. You have Crane, who is a crane and uses the crane style of martial arts. Then Mantis who is a praying mantis that specializes in mantis style. There’s Monkey who… okay you get the idea. The point is that it is really cool to see all these cartoon characters tearing it up with a bunch of sweet martial art moves.

I guess the only real thing that I do find off putting about these two movies is that they have sooooooo many famous voices playing characters but they hardly have any dialogue. I mean the furious five consists of Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross and Jackie Chan and in the last movie I think they may have had about five lines each. They do say and do more in this movie but it seem a bit like an expensive way to do things. Gary Oldman plays the villain this time round and he’s great. But that goes without saying, Gary Oldman plays a good villain in just about everything, it’s like saying that Will Smith plays a great black guy. Believe it or not they even have Jean-Claude Van Damme playing a supporting character in this too, weird but again he has about two lines so you might miss it.

So that’s all I have to say about Kung-Fu Panda 2. Nothing ground breaking but some good fun for everyone. They’ve set it up for a third movie so lets just hope good old Dreamworks doesn’t run this into the ground like they did with Shrek. See you next week.

Rowan

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