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Archive for the ‘Kung Fu Panda 2 (3D)’ Category

Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) sends out the Furious Fighters — Dragon Warriors Po (Jack Black), Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Viper (Lucy Liu), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Crane (David Cross) — on their second adventure. This time they must save the world, and China, from the evil domination plans of the albino peacock Lord Shen (Gary Oldman). But before they can do that, Po, the affable panda must find inner peace and come to terms with his troubled past.

Kung Fu Panda works not only because of his bumbling ways as a martial arts hero but also because he is such a bundle of doubts, misgivings and apprehensions. Yes, he’s hardly your archetypal superhero and therein lies his super charm.

The first film was a winner because it not only traced the birth of a hero, but also had the philosophical underpinnings of the most-reader friendly self-help book. How to grow from zero to hero: that was the sweet and stirring sub-text of the film that won young and adult hearts alike with the antics of an overweight, ungainly panda who could have spent the rest of his life peddling noodles, if he hadn’t mastered himself….

Well, Po is already a hero now, nevertheless, he has his moments of weakness and his frailties which still need to be overcome before he can teach his new enemy the lesson of his life. Po must come to terms with his strange parentage: how can a panda be the son of a goose; so what, if the goose (James Hong) is the best dad in the world…. Time for some flashback and the arrival of the cutest baby panda on screen who makes you go all gooey with his baby talk.

The action sequences of the film, shot in 3D, do form the highlight of it, but there’s no undermining the friendship-and family emotional sequences. Perhaps, the most touching sequences of the film are the show of affection between the noodle-hawking goose, Mr Ping and his adopted son Po and the spontaneous touch-feely tid-bits between heavy-stuff Tigress and all-butter Po.

the sequel ironically suffers a hangover from the record-busting first part which made a spectacular worldwide haul of over $450 million. While the first film won the world audience over with the most unusual situational gags ever witnessed in a recent comedy and had the funniest laugh lines coming from a bunch of oddball characters, part two relies more on action and mayhem to tickle your funny bone. There is too much of running helter-skelter in the sleazy downtown, with gangsters and drug dealers chasing the threesome (Stu, Alan, Phil). And there is too little of repartee and rip-roaring goof-ups to keep the grins on overdrive. End result? You barely manage a few luke-warm laughs here and there, although, rest assured, you do not get bored.

The wolfpack is still in fine fettle. Although they seem to have lost some of their spark. While Stu (Ed Helms) spends most of his time displaying bewilderment, Alan (Zach Galifianakis) oscillates between playing obnoxious and eccentric and is quite happy fondling a drug-peddling monkey. Phil (Bradley Cooper), the smart alec, has little smartness to display and is basically trying to figure out how the three of them ended up in a seedy Bangkok hotel with a monkey and a ringed finger which belongs to Stu’s teen brother-in-law. The plot follows a similar track-the-events-back style that was so effectively used in the first part. The search is primarily for Stu’s Stanford-genius brother-in-law who has disappeared after the wild beach party. There’s Paul Giamatti, Ken Jeong and Mike Tyson(yes, again) to spice up the fun quotient, but by and large, the film relies on low-brow humor (sexual miscapades, monkey with a penchant for genitals) to create merriment.