philosoraptor42

A movie podcast I discovered fairly recently was the /filmcast (slash-film-cast) and while everyone was being so-very-surprised by the poor quality of the recent "The Hangover Part II", they had already decided from the outset that Kung Fu Panda 2 was a more worthy focus for their attention. This was all the more surprising considering that the podcast seems to made up of people who come across as quite serious film reviewers, rather than just ordinary people expressing their opinions. It was at the point where one of them explained that they were originally sceptical about the franchise, but ended up putting Kung Fu Panda as one of their top 10 movies of the year! Now while I really liked the first Kung Fu Panda movie, I'm not sure I'd put it in the top ten out of my favourites of 2008. But how does it compare with the sequel?

Before I start on the review, I feel I ought to tackle something else first. The trailers.

Trailers before the main film, because you must share my pain...
What with this being a children's movie, there was no trailer for Conan the Barbarian or Cowboys and Aliens. Trailers were strictly limited to releases suitable for the movie rating (PG - Parental Guidance i.e. anyone can watch it unsupervised. But there's a mild disclaimer for super-sensitive parents.) So here's what we got:

Transformers 3. Okay, so it wasn't anything like the worst trailer. However, the decepticons all still look identical, the human characters still look like they are going to be pointless wastes of space and Optimus Prime is given some absolutely cheese-tastic lines. "You may loose your faith in us, but not in yourselves." *groan!* Thank goodness "Masters of the Universe" received a far more worthy live-action movie. Sure, it wasn't exactly brilliant, but this just shows how much worse things might have been. These live-action outings have me nostalgic for the old cheesy Transformers cartoon movie.

Mr. Poppa's Penguins. Um, what the hell? Jim Carrey has CGI penguins in his apartment for no good reason and doesn't seem entirely happy about it. Except when he's doing dance routines with them. Bizarre and entirely unappealing. *shrugs*

The Smurfs movie. It looks like a ridiculously stupid cash-in which made me physically uncomfortable to watch (and this is just the trailer!). It doesn't really look appropriate for children either. We have Smurfette being objectified. We have "I just smurfed in my mouth" (or something like that) used as a euphemism for partially throwing up. And we have a smurf falling to their doom, played for laughs. The smurf in question even says something like "I'm going to meet my smurf" to suggest that they think they are going to die, but meanwhile the whole atmosphere of the scene is that we are supposed to be emotionally unphased by the likelihood that they are about to die. Also, just to be entirely derivative we have Neil Patrick Harris being tied up "Gulliver's Travels"-style, but a woman walks in and assures us that there's no reason to worry about being tied up by Smurfs because "they are just so cute". Oh ffs.... just kill me now.

The Zookeeper. Okay, I'm less upset about the movie in this instance than I am about the marketing. It was essentially a teaser. We see some animals accidentally revealing to the zookeeper that they can talk, but the main way this was supposed to be appealing to the children was by having the eponymous figure screaming in comedic terror. The deathly silence during this trailer is best compared with the childrens' reaction to the Johnny English: Reborn trailer later on. On top of the trailer for Johnny English they also had a section where Rowan Atkinson is promoting a special cinema card. While I was busy mourning the loss of Blackadder, there's a bit where the card ends up boomaranging back and hitting Rowan Atkinson in the face. Cue loud laughter from the children in the audience (especially impressive since I think most of the audience were adults). Children like slapstick, but I'm afraid they need a little more than comedic screaming and talking animals. The Zookeeper trailer is condescending in the extreme on top of, most likely, being a dreadful movie. Okay, so it wasn't painful to watch like the Smurfs trailer was, but then again it was less than half the length.

But thankfully there was one trailer that looked like it was offering something worthwhile to children. That was, of course, the trailer for Cars 2. Michael Caine stars as a James Bond style secret agent car. Sure there were at least three toilet based gags over the course of the trailer, but there was so much thrown in there. There was even an explosive action scene that looked far more exciting than anything in the Transformers 3 trailer. (Oddly I can't seem to find the specific trailer I saw on youtube. *shrugs*)

Side note: Sadly it looks like awesome trailers are deceptive, once again....

Kung Fu Panda 2 Review
Well I had to get to it eventually.

I'm going to mention aspects of the first movie as I write this. I've seen both of them in quick succession, but to be honest the first movie doesn't deserve the same level of attention. Okay, so one of the best parts of the first movie was James Hong (Lo Pan from "Big Trouble in Little China" believe it or not) voicing Kung Fu Panda's father, a goose obsessed with his noodle restaurant. The combination of his voice and the animation just works perfectly. As such, unsurprisingly he is similarly prominent in the sequel. Some great Pixar-style moments (i.e. it's-now-time-to-make-you-cry moments) involve this character.

One thing that you won't see in the original that is prominent in the sequel is flashbacks to Kung Fu Panda's past. And you know what that means... baby panda!!!! ZOMG so cute!

Okay, so the first movie took a lot of elements from kung fu action movies and made them into animated form. The five great kung fu warriors voiced by Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, David Cross (who???) and Angelina Jolie all fight in a particular animal style directly linked to which animal they are. So naturally there's a crane and a tiger fighting in crane and tiger style. Things get rather odder with the praying mantis and snake. The plot was pretty simple, but there was a great deal of charm to the movie.

Everything has been ramped up a notch in the sequel however. Not in the sense of "let's do it all again, only bigger", but in a way that expands on what was set up before. Straight away it's made clear that there is something important in Kung Fu Panda's past which is going to be central to the movie. It all follows from ideas explored before and is a very clever decision. Also one scene where Master Shifu (played by Dustin Hoffman) was seeking "inner peace" in the first movie is also tied into the sequel. Also, instead of just providing yet another expert fighting kung fu expert as the bad guy, we have superior technology as the threat.

We also have Gary Oldman voicing the bad guy, not that you'd know of course. It's surprising that we haven't noticed Gary Oldman doing a lot of voice work in the past, since his expertise as a vocal chameleon seem especially suited to it. That said he's worked on animated movies before. He was in Planet 51 and interestingly he plays three separate characters in the motion capture movie of "A Christmas Carol" (Bob Crachitt, Marley and Tiny Tim. Quite a variety!). It's made clear right at the beginning of the movie that the bad guy is a peacock and Gary Oldman does a fantastic job of giving this figure the gravitas he needs as a ruthless and evil figure, while also giving him a more human side.

The graphics are absolutely amazing in this movie. They didn't seem particularly special in the first movie (though I was watching it last week rather than three years ago, so perhaps that explains it). In this movie the effects are absolutely jaw-dropping. The scenery is gorgeous, the facial movements are brilliantly detailed and subtle textures of clothes or fur can be clearly recognised. There are also some very impressively worked out 2-dimensional scenes which are used to depict some flashbacks. (Just to clarify, I didn't watch this movie in 3D. By 2-dimensional, I mean as in 2-dimensional animation, by contrast to the 3-dimensional computer animation pioneered in the Toy Story movie. Clearer now?)

The worst thing I have to say about this movie is that, right at the very end, there's a scene setting up for a third movie. It's not like it's a vital part of the story left unresolved, but it does leave you a little worried if the third movie sucks. The last thing you want is a reminder of the sucky third movie every time you watch the second one. (Though the third movie could be brilliant, of course.) Then again, Back To The Future does something similar and I don't really mind that so much. Perhaps it doesn't matter.

There are exciting action scenes, awe-inspiring visuals, emotional engagement, character development and it's hilarious. Interestingly enough, the obvious comedy lines are often not the bits that get the real laughs. More often it's the things in the background or the interruptions that cause the real laughs. The movie constantly demands your attention and perhaps that's why I found myself unable to move at the end. I found myself sitting through the whole of the credits (which admittedly feature some very pretty artwork) and then struggling to my feet in the dark of the cinema (since the lights didn't come on straight away at the end).

I'd say the only film I've enjoyed more this year so far was Source Code. And even then it's a bit of a toss-up between them. This was an absolutely brilliant experience at the cinema and I loved every minute of it.

5/5 (For both Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Panda 2, but much moreso for the latter.)