Posts tagged Jack Black
The rule of thumb is that sequels are never as good as the original. I don’t care what you say, Night at the Museum 2 was not as good as the first, nor was Jurassic Park II. And I’ll go ahead and jump into a boiling pot with this one: Empire Strikes Back was definitely not the best Star Wars film. Regardless of how you feel about that one, the point still stands: sequels aren’t as good…Except for Kung Fu Panda 2, which will knock that point on its butt and require some new thumbs to go with the rules.
We pick up not too far from where we left Po and the Furious Five and are treated to our first glimpse of them working together as a powerhouse team now that Po has fully embraced his role as the Dragon Warrior. It sounds silly, but the fights are wonderfully choreographed and stretch the limits of the imagination. At one point, Viper constricts an enemy and controls him like a puppet. That’s cool. And cool is something this movie uses with great relish and to great effect.
Kung Fu Panda is not about being cool. If it was, it wouldn’t be about an overweight Panda martial artist who clearly feels no shame and isn’t bright enough to figure out that a duck is not his real father. But there’s enough cool mixed in to keep us from shutting down all but our humor detectors. It blends marvelously with the offbeat humor that Kung Fu Panda has always harnessed well and a new element of drama and plot that we honestly never saw coming. The characters are deep and rich; we explore Po’s past and touch on Tigress’s issues. We see the “inner peace” of Master Shifu as he finally recovers from the events of the first film. And some of these moments are heavy. Almost too heavy for an animated film. But they are immediately followed by Po trying to do something he simply cannot do and we forget the pain and laugh once more.
It’s been about a year since an animated film made me want to both laugh and cry within the same stretch of time, but Kung Fu Panda 2 did it. There’s something for everyone here: comedy, kung fu, a few little historical moments of zen, and the kind of character development that is frankly lacking from movies nowadays.
For mastering the Art of Awesome, I give Kung Fu Panda 2 a 9 out of 10.
Written by: Steven Jones
