Kung Fu Panda 3 [PG]

Since finding inner peace Po has been in a state of certainty and awesomeness. But his kung fu journey is far from over. The next thing he must accomplish is the mastery of chi and what better way to do this than become a teacher of kung fu? Unfortunately, as a teacher Poe sucks more than his first attempts at kung fu and his personal dramas are accelerated when his true father appears in the village and an evil kung fu master returns from the spirit realm with a plan to steal all the chi from kung fu masters. In order to defeat this threat, Po must master chi and discover what it truly means to be the Dragon Warrior. 

I wasn’t really expecting a lot from this movie in terms of story and narrative structure and stuff and I wasn’t disappointed on that front. Like its predecessors, Kung Fu Panda 3 is just another fun Dreamworks production that dazzles with its beautiful animation and art direction, its sweet stories, and loveable characters. 

The animation is, without a doubt, the hero of this movie. The art direction, the colour, and lighting that went into this movie was just staggeringly beautiful and I particularly liked the different modes of animation that were used throughout the film to depict the past events and present montages. 

In terms of story, it’s another exploration into identity: Po discovering who he really is, and whilst there is nothing inherently wrong with that, I was a little bit underwhelmed by the fact that the film relied heavily on the power of that theme rather than the clever ways in which it could be depicted in order to get the point across. I couldn’t help but feel that the writing was a little bit lacklustre and a lot of clichéd narrative devices were employed, to fine effect, but that just didn’t elevate the story to where it could have been. 

What I think it came down to was the introduction of a bunch of new characters that ended up hogging a lot of the screen time. Admittedly, some of these characters were pretty awesome: our villain Kai is quite possibly the coolest villain that these movies have seen and the film is totally worth watching just for him alone, but the introduction of these new characters and the screen time attention that they were paid meant that other characters got shoved into the background and just became redundant. The Furious Five were practically pieces of furniture in this film and I found that kind of sad because in terms of identity, there is still so much that could be done with these characters. 

Aside from that bit of weakness within the writing, the movie itself is a fine family film: it looks very pretty, has a solid story with a sweet moral, and a not-so subtle shout-out to same-sex parenting. What more can you want? 

Featuring the voice talents of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Lucy Liu, J. K. Simmons, Bryan Cranston, James Hong, Kate Hudson, Randall Duk Kim, Wayne Knight, and Jackie Chan, Kung Fu Panda 3 is a cute and enjoyable family movie. Filled with action, adventure, drama, and comedy, it doesn’t live up to the vivacity of the first movie but still delivers the laughs and the brilliance of animation.