Kung Fu Panda 2

Kung Fu Panda 2

The original Kung Fu Panda told a simple story about a lazy overweight Panda named Po (Jack Black), who by the whim of fate must learn to become a great warrior and save the valley. The trouble is that it’s hard to see quite where you can go with this after the original tied up its story so nicely. The answer, at least according to the film’s stars, is to create a more mature, meaningful film with more complex themes, though one has to wonder how they can achieve this in a film about assorted animals that must save all of China by performing impossible kung fu.

To create a more mature film Po uncovers the shockingly obvious truth that he was adopted (his father being a goose) and must somehow attain inner piece to truly master kung fu, whilst of course saving the land from the villainous Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) and martial arts itself. So far, so good. However, the problem is that the characters simply are not developed enough to allow for any serious emotion, with Po working as a comic character but failing to inspire deep emotion, whilst the numerous other characters have no time to develop at all. Most of the celebrity voices, like Dustin Hoffman (Master Shifu) and Jackie Chan (Monkey), are wasted as they get practically no dialogue at all, with only Po, Tigris (Angelina Jolie) and Lord Shen getting any real dialogue at all. Meaning that the story and the characters fail to live up to any of these apparent aspirations, and instead the story becomes merely the secondary interest and mainly just the basis for animated humour and kung fu rather than being particularly emotive.

However, this is not death knell it would normally be for a film, as here the animated humour and action is overall rather good with the slapstick proving rather entertaining and making the film perfectly watchable. The animation itself looks fantastic, particularly in 2D rather then 3D, where it is bright, colourful, and filled with detail throughout with the scenery proving to be quite spectacular, providing a rich textured world in which the story can take place. Which, to be honest, is a good thing as the rest of the film is not interesting enough to maintain our attention, meaning we inevitably spend a lot of time looking at this.

Therefore, Kung Fu Panda 2 fails to achieve anything particularly meaningful as many of its stars have claimed and as such is not very special, with none the emotional involvement that their rivals at Pixar manage so well. Yet it is still perfectly watchable, for though its attempts to add in additional themes and concepts are poorly done the action and comedy are good and sufficient enough to keep the audience adequately entertained, especially its smaller members. It’s just not anything particularly special, ending up as another run of the mill American CG animation.

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