I’m a huge fan of the original Kung Fu Panda. It was a fun, hilarious, sweet, and surprising movie from Dreamworks. So of course I was stoked to see Kunf Fu Panda 2, despite knowing it was a sequel.
Well…it’s a sequel, but at least it stays true to most of the values of the first. It’s perfectly passable and retained much of the sweetness (of both the poignant and duuude variety) of the original, but what was lost was the humor. In fact, this is noticeable immediately in the opening monologue. In the original, it set short, set the stage, AND was hilarious to boot–the new one only nails 1/3 of that and provides only the setup.
With that said, there were a few laughs–I got a kick out of Chinese dragon costume fight scene, but I think I can count the amount of laughs on one–maybe two–hands. It’s simply just no where as funny as the original (which I blame partially on the tragic lack of Master Shifu).
The fight scenes did look terrific though (especially in 3D), and I liked how they incorporated the Peacock’s tail in great-looking and inventive ways. I also liked how the they built upon Po’s relationship with his “dad.”
Speaking of dads…not sure how I feel about that ‘total setup for the 3rd movie’ ending though…
The movie was joltingly poorly written and/or edited (often hard to tell which was which.) Scenes just sort of spilled into other scenes. One moment Po was left behind in the prison, the next he beat the Five there. The harbor battle was happening at night, and then suddenly it was daytime and everyone disappeared except Po and Shen. There was all kinds of that; it was jarringly bad in that regard. The decision to have very little of Master Shifu was, to say the very least, regrettable.
It was an enjoyable movie all the same, with good characters and, as per the first one, a real respect for the genre. But in terms of flow and tone it was bad, so all in all it was just an okay movie. The original was a wonderful film and a hard act to follow.
Really? I quite liked the movie! I found it as funny as, if not funnier than, Kung Fu Panda 1.
I mean, it was pretty obvious that Po wouldn’t have stayed in jail, and would have sneaked out to find Shen. And if they’d showed you breaking out of jail, then it wouldn’t have been a surprise, would it?
And I thought it was pretty obvious that the boats were going out at dawn, and the sun was just rising at the end of the fight.
Anyway. Good for a laugh, nothing deep, just a feel good story.
Master Shifu: You found your inner peace! so…quickly [looks bitter]
I liked it, but I found it much more sappy than the previous movie. One thing that bugged me was that Tigress obviously could relate to Po regarding being orphaned, but it felt like a scene was left on the cutting room floor about it- or are we to simply assume everyone remembers that Tigress was orphaned and left at Shifus doorstep?
Bad guy was HILARIOUSLY cliched. Talk about puppy-kicking evil here. Its like the writers took every stereotype about villains and rolled them into one.
Something that kinda pissed me off is that the whole prophecy ends up that the peacock guy kills all the pandas except Po. But we see a whole freakin VILLAGE of pandas (and Po’s dad) at the very end. I told my fiancee,
“For a murderous warlord trying to annihilate the Panda race, he sure did a pretty crappy job”.
Seriously, its like an alien saying he’s going to destroy all humans and only bothering to annihilate Detroit. :dubious:
Aside: I read somewhere that Dreamworks, at one point, wanted the series to be SIX movies long! That statement, apparently, has since been walked back to fewer, but really… Rare indeed is the film series that goes anywhere near that long; it’s almost unheard of. The only one I can think of offhand, the Bond series, went through so many changes that it’s almost not the same films in between, AND it started off with a very enduring character. I can’t imagine what train of thought would’ve gone into the original statement.
'Course, with direct to DVD stuff getting better these days, who knows. The Land Before Time found it worthwhile to do.
^ Well, the Shrek series is going to be at 5 with the upcoming Puss in Boots movies (six if you count the 3D film at Universal studios, which takes place between 1 and 2), so I could see it. Unfortunately, I doubt any will be as good as the first.
Saw it yesterday and enjoyed it, but not as much as the first one. I agree it wasn’t as funny. Some of the action scenes went by so fast they were hard to follow, too, which I understand was part of the point but in 3D it kind of hurt my brain to watch them.
Haven’t seen it yet, so I’m wondering; is the 3D worth it? Will it lose something if seen in 2D?
I dunno. I saw it in 2D, and it was plenty good, so eh.
I almost wish I had seen it in 2D.
I saw it last night. It was beautiful, but awful, just not in the same class as the first one at all. Po was never believable as hero in it, and it didn’t really matter since none of the good guys seemed worth saving anyway. It was on a par with “Star Wars : Episode 1”.