Dreamworks should be having a grand celebration for themselves all throughout this summer. Their main competition in computer animation is releasing a continuation of talking cars, much to the chagrin of many insiders and the online public. At their ready is a sequel to a surprise commercial and critical hit that pushed the boundaries of computerized action and served as a great example of the Western take on martial arts films. What a glorious Hollywood smackdown we, the American viewing public, get to experience. The animation kingdom is being taken over. Sadly, the king is yet again safe. Long live the king.
The shear disappointment to be felt with KUNG FU PANDA 2 masks all of the good qualities it beholds. If you head into this expecting another HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, you are about to feel a world of hurt because it is simply another KUNG FU PANDA. Literally, this sequel follows the same bullet points and morals as the original. To make it even worse, the new ramped up drama in the storyline, as to keep the franchise healthy, is constantly struck down and humiliated thanks to Dreamworks' patented stupidly goofy humor and extensive hand-holding. You are given the worst case of self-plagiarism and studio limbo.
Po and the Furious Five are sent out to stop Shen, a disgraced peacock non grata, from taking over all of China with his new creation of gunpowder. To add more overdone melodrama, it seems that Po and Shen have been forever linked with each other. Shen is foretold that a being of black and white will defeat his ambitions. Po meanwhile finds out that Shen has somehow impacted his own unknown past. If you can figure it out from this, then yes, you are correct. If you can't, the director chose to spoil it in the beginning while still thinking it is a mystery to solve for the rest of the film's short and rushed 95 minutes.
The story of the first movie wasn't exactly groundbreaking avant-garde but it had a nice simple touch when it wasn't being badass. This film just repackages everything again but with no soul or even punches. The Dragon Warrior becomes a Yin-Yang symbol. The Dragon Scroll becomes "Inner Peace". A tortoise elder becomes a soothsaying goat. And, in the most clearly copied examples, there is the same speech about "your own destiny" and a scene where the villain kills a proud Rhino warrior. I didn't add heart to the missing links because that is one of few good parts of this film. The film ends the lingering running joke of the first one with the mystery of Po being the son of a noodle-selling goose. While it does hit the same notes you would expect of an adoption plot and overexplains it for the nosebleeders, I will say that it works thanks to the chemistry being Jack Black and James Hong. Hong especially saves this from being a true eye-roller. However, the creators seem to forget that Master Shifu, Dustin Hoffman's character, was another surrogate father for Po. Instead, Hoffman is given only four scenes and hardly any attention except for how awesome "Inner Peace" is.
If the plot is problematic, you would think the excellent animated fights would save the experience. Yet again, the film disappoints because there isn't a lot of fights. The majority of the key action and animation is regulated to comedy, bad comedy. As in fat guy fall down and make weird faces humor, not in the stylings of Jackie Chan or Stephen Chow. Shen is so hard to take seriously as a villain, even with Gary Oldman as his voice actor, thanks to the many misguided comedic bits with him. Even the gags that work are ruined by previous dumb moments; A joke involving Po's big declaration to fight and the power of the Doppler Effect is rendered mute when a previous scene had Shen able to see the heroes doing flips on the other side of a falling tower several miles away. The only standout of animation, beside the general art direction and all of the 2D flashback scenes, is the very early brawl where the music is provided by the use of musical instruments as weapons. Even if you are entertained by one sequence, you'll just be heartbroken do to the many sour note endings to the scenes. Expect to see the Furious Five defeated constantly and Po sad and confused.
This was such a true letdown that it is shocking how badly handled the film was. When I saw a giant tower as one of the settings, I thought I was going to see another GAME OF DEATH, not another stairs joke. Obviously this story isn't over, thanks to Dreamworks' previous press statements and the ending. Judging from what they have featured, it looks like the next one is going to be another "searching for myself" journey when it really needs to be something else. A tournament, an invading terracotta army, hopping zombies. Something to keep the humor around but fit the action and the drama the studio is desperately trying to prove.
FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5
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