Kung Fu Panda II

Due to a series of circumstances completely within my control, I didn’t get to see a movie until very late this week. Also, because Evan hadn’t seen Kung Fu Panda (and he’s also pretty busy), I got to take my nephew Brady to see Kung Fu Panda II. I explained the Preview Game to him, and he held his own (the previews were for Spy Kids 4, Smurfs, Muppets, and Tintin). So mad props to him.

The movie starts with paper animations of the backstory. Two peacocks rule China, or simply watch over the capitol. They’re pretty decent people, and good rulers, and put on magnificent fireworks displays. But their son Shen starts using fireworks for evil (what with increasing the payloads and aiming them at people). The couple go to a fortune teller, who says the son will be stopped by a warrior of black and white. Shen overhears, and wipes out the panda population. He proudly goes back to his parents, who banish him for his wholesale slaughter (admittedly, some of this was reading between the lines because genocide is a little heavy for a kids movie).

Anyhow, we cut to CG as Po (a panda, and the dragon warrior) is impressing his friends and kung fu mates with his face-stuffing skills (he can fit 40 dumplings in his mouth at once). He’s totally ready to be a Kung. Fu. Hero (Got stars in his eyes. And you thought I was going to break out Kung Fu Fighting, didn’t you). He goes to his teacher, Master Shifu (bonus points – shifu means “master” in Chinese. You pick up these things when you watch waaaaaay to many kung-fu flicks), who’s trying a technique of rolling a raindrop around his body without harming it. It requires inner peace, which Master Shifu is working on, and which Po lacks.

Inner peace is one of the plot lines in this movie, but since it’s a rather nebulous concept, they’ve boiled it down to Po finding out he’s adopted, trying to find out why, and what that means for who he is. There’s also the matter of taking care of Shen, who’s invented a weapon that can destroy Kung Fu.

The voice acting is pretty good, although most of the lines are by Jack Black and Gary Oldman (Po and Shen, respectively). Angelina Jolie has a large supporting role as Tigress, and James Hong has a smaller role as Mr. Ping (Po’s adopted father). Everything else may as well be an extended cameo. Jackie Chan, Seth Rogan, Luci Liu, David Cross, Dustin Hoffman, Michelle Yeoh (well, she has a few more lines than the rest), Danny McBride, Jean Claude Van Damme … they all get a few lines at most. Maybe the chance to work on such a fun movie was enough to bring them in.

While the voice actors did a good job, the animators should be the stars of the film. A lot of the jokes were physical (some lines might go over kids’ heads, but everyone appreciates a good pie-in-the-face gag), and they were tremendously done. The climax takes place on some beautiful looking water, even if Po does bust out a move reminiscent of the Kanoball attack in the original Mortal Kombat.

One thing they do very well is take advantage of the all CG format. Turn gravity off? No problem. Put cameras where they couldn’t? Sure. Have ridiculous weapons and armour? Absolutely. When Star Wars went cartoon (an event I try and pretend never happened), they didn’t really take advantage of their medium. Their fights were generic and pretty boring, and different very little from what would happen in real life. In cartoons, you can have people (or animals, in this case) moving quickly, throwing fists and feet in all directions, or racing down streets on a one-wheeled cart. The Kung Fu Pandas really get it right.

Another thing right is the music. It’s done by John Powell and Hans Zimmer. If you don’t know John Powell, he’s done the music for the Bourne movies, as well as Hancock. If you don’t know Hans Zimmer, you lead a miserable life. No, wait – sorry. You may not recognize his name, but you’ll sure know his scores. He’s done The Rock, Gladiator, The Dark Knight, Inception (Although the trailer music was by Zach Hempsey), and so forth. So the music is excellent, mixing (what we foreigners think of as) Chinese music with action scores to really add to the movie. Makes everything more exciting.

So this movie is totally a theatre movie, especially if you see it with a theatre full of kids. There’s something really uplifting about kids’ laughter, so make sure there’s at least one person under the age of then when you see it.