For an adult (technically speaking) who is an older-school animation nut such as myself, the Kung Fu Panda franchise may not have been exactly geared towards me. That being said, I really quite enjoyed the first two. It’s a fun series with pleasing character designs, great action, satisfying morals, and even draws parallels to some of my favorite wuxia style films from China. (Think House of Flying Daggers, or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)
Kung Fu Panda 3 does a great job keeping up with the pace of its predecessors. Po the Panda, (Jack Black), is informed he must now teach the Furious Five as his old master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) is planning on retiring. Po is…not a great teacher. In the meantime, Po’s long-lost father Li Shan (Brian Cranston) finally tracks his son down and is determined to reunite him with the Panda culture he has been missing his entire life. To complicate things even further, Kai, a warrior who has been dead for hundreds of years, has learned how to steal the chi of other master Kung Fu artists and has returned to the mortal world bent on revenge. The only way Po can defeat him is to train the entire Panda village in the art of Kung Fu. Quite a lot of plot for a children’s film!
Extra conflict isn’t the only thing Kung Fu Panda 3 has more of as an entire village of pandas is added to the already big cast of characters. I actually really love all of the new characters, but by contending with the previous ones (such as The Fantastic Five), nobody ends up getting quite enough screen time for my satisfaction. One, in particular, is the character of Mei Mei (voiced by Kate Hudson), who, while interesting, wasn’t utilized to her fullest. Two new characters that were very fleshed out though were Li Shan and Kai (voiced by J.K. Simmons).
This film was literally a Chinese/American collaboration as it is the first produced by the new Oriental DreamWorks studio in China, created by the American company Dreamworks and the Chinese conglomerate Shanghai Media Group. The new studio did a fantastic job of recreating the colorful world the first two films both in style and quality, while successfully testing driving a first-time director Alessandro Carloni with the help of the director of Kung Fu Panda 2, Jennifer Yuh.
Even though there were underutilized characters, the film came together with the combination of the new plot and the integration of the previous characters into the new story to create a very entertaining film that both adults and cubs could enjoy.
