With “Kung Fu Panda 4,” DreamWorks Animation has basically gone the same route as Disney and Pixar lately, regarding their feature films. Meaning, when new and original material doesn’t pay off, they dip back into the well of a property that’s already fairly drained. Small children will enjoy it, but other than a small collection of fun moments, “Kung Fu Panda 4” is fairly uninspired.
Po
Jack Black is back as the voice of Po, the chubby, dumpling-worshipping martial arts panda bear. The main storyline is that the time has come for him, as the renowned Dragon Warrior, to find a successor who will oversee the Valley of Peace as Spiritual Advisor.
Po soon finds out that an evil sorceress known as the Chameleon (voiced by Viola Davis) is threatening to drain the peace out of the Valley of Peace.
Po then teams up with Zhen, a sly, thieving fox (voiced by Awkwafina). See, this right here is an example of hidden (and twisted) truths: “Zhen” in Chinese means truth, and here you’ve got a fox named “Truth” who lies and steals stuff. As the Internet slang would say: “SMH” (shaking my head). Anyway, the enlightened panda and the sneaky fox go on a journey to stop the even sneakier Chameleon.
Installment 4
The third “Panda” installment (2016) was when the quality all started to go downhill for the franchise. However, the whole thing has been kept on life-support via streaming on Netflix and Peacock, where the original theatrical releases have thrived, and also, most recently, with a series on Netflix that leads up to the third movie.
What It Is
Installment 4 is written by the same writers who wrote the first three “Kung Fu Panda” movies, so it’s a bit surprising that this one is so noticeably less funny. It would seem the screenplay scribes used up all their best material. The only thing I found inspired is a thoroughly clueless pelican (voiced by Ronny Chieng) who’s got a fish in his mouth that he never swallows, and the fish leans out and cracks wise every once in a while to hilarious effect.
Also, Po’s colleagues, the “Furious Five,” are off on their own adventures, leaving Po and Zhen to shoulder all the road-trip action that’s pretty much thoroughly devoid of surprises. There’s a whole side-journey involving Po’s goose dad Mr. Ping (voiced by James Hong) and Po’s panda dad Li (voiced by Bryan Cranston) as they go searching for their boys, but which is all pretty standard storytelling formula as well.
Viola Davis does a good job voicing shape-shifting Chameleon, who captures villains from past episodes (such as snow leopard Tai Lung, voiced by Ian McShane) out of the spirit world, sucking all their martial arts skills out of them with the use of Po’s Staff of Wisdom. When she then morphs into a gigantic rhino-leopard-phoenix-dragon-mantis-panda behemoth, Po admits (words to the effect of) “Wow! That’s pretty cool! Horrifying, but, you know—cool too!”
But ultimately, it’s the lack of solid humor that undermines the movie, since the franchise has always worked best as a mix of humor and solid kung fu fighting. Speaking of which, the kung fu action isn’t nearly as impressive; the previous movies were based on classic Shaw Brothers films.
For me though, as mentioned, the frustration of the series lies in that it touches, tantalizingly, on meditation technique, reincarnation, spirit realms, Kung fu masters and acolytes, paths of enlightenment, and the otherworldly energy needed to power up miraculous kung fu moves, to name a few topics. Such profound things, watered down to tiny kid jokes.
