Kung Fu Panda 4 reminds us that animated movie franchises should really end after the third one.
I’m still kinda mad that Pixar gave us one of the best movie trilogies of all time with the Toy Story saga, then served up a meh fourth installment in 2019. The same goes with the Shrek franchise, already running on fumes when DreamWorks dropped the Justin Timberlake-enhanced Shrek the Third, churning out the It’s a Wonderful Life-ish Shrek Forever After in 2010.
Forever director Mike Mitchell also directs the newest Panda adventure, which also feels like an unnecessary remake. I was definitely getting major Zootopia vibes with this installment, as beloved roly-poly Dragon Warrior Po (Jack Black) teams up with shady, crafty fox Zhen (Awkwafina) in order to stop The Chameleon (Viola Davis), a reptilian sorceress who goes on a looting and plundering rampage by shape-shifting into other animals, including Po’s first-movie foe Tai Lung (yes, Ian McShane is back!).
If you’re expecting the Furious Five to join Po on this, Po conveniently explains to villagers at the beginning that they’re on “super-cool, kung-fu missions.” Considering how little screen time the characters got in the last film, I guess DreamWorks had a hard time convincing Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan and the others to come back to basically voice cameos.
Dustin Hoffman does return as crotchety Master Shifu, who’s mostly there to press Po on finding a Dragon Warrior replacement so Po can assume his new title as “spiritual leader of the Valley of Peace.” (How much are you willing to bet that Zhen plays a crucial part in that?) Po’s neurotic, adoptive goose dad (James Hong) and biological panda dad (Bryan Cranston) from the last movie also return, teaming up to follow Po secretly. We also get a possibly problematic influx of Asian voices playing nefarious characters, including Oscar-winning comeback kid Ke Huy Quan as Sunda, the pangolin leader of a den of thieves, and Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng as a smart-ass, ship-owning fish shooting one-liners from a pelican’s gullet.
Thanks to longtime Panda writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger and Forever writer Darren Lemke, there’s a lot more screwballery popping off in this Panda mission. This is especially true once Po and Zhen head to Juniper City, a bustling metropolis where, in one chase sequence, they run away from the po-po while the soundtrack plays a Chinese traditional music version of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.” There’s a sense of quasi-dark, Looney Tunes-style absurdity, as Po interacts with such characters as a deceptively adorable yet clearly sociopathic trio of bunnies. “Violence makes my tummy tingle,” one of them says in a movie that’s generally aimed at kids. (If you do have little ones, make sure you let them know afterward that violence isn’t a good thing, before they set their siblings on fire.)
While some may see the hijinks as enjoyable, computer-animated tomfoolery, this sequel doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It practically seems like an elongated episode of one of the several Panda spinoff shows that’s been floating around on streaming platforms for years. This one is definitely missing the introspective, revelatory storytelling director Jennifer Yuh Nelson brought to the second (my favorite) and third installments.
Listen, I’m all for shits-and-giggles escapist entertainment. After three Kung Fu Panda movies that gave us a decent mix of hilarity and pathos, however, this derivative, annoyingly predictable volume seems like a letdown. But hey, if you wanna keep your kids busy for an hour and a half by showing them a brand-new story of a rotund panda bear getting his Jet Li on, Kung Fu Panda 4 is waiting for you.
