Kung Fu Panda 4
Kung Fu Panda 4
After Po is tapped to become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace, he needs to find and train a new Dragon Warrior, while a wicked sorceress plans to re-summon all the master villains whom Po has vanquished to the spirit realm.
Varun reviewedOctober 19, 2024
Forgettable and lame. KFP2 is one of my all time favourite animated movies, I’ve watched it a million times. The franchise has only been going downhill from there. It’s been 8 years since the last movie and this is really all they could come up with? No Furious Five is the biggest mistake they made. Zhen is a cliche thief character who turns good guy, everyone saw the twist coming. Her relationship with Po is sweet but it still lacks a sense of gravity because that’s how the tone of the entire movie is, filled with boring comedy, uninspired action and low stakes danger. People tell me it’s a kid’s movie that I shouldn’t take seriously, but the first 2 films had insane stakes with the villains even murdering people and it gave the characters amazing and heartbreaking backstories. Here the cliche villain explains her motivation and backstory in like 2 lines, and only has a shallow veneer of menacing intent. The chase scene in Juniper City does not even hold a candle to the chase scene from the 2nd movie. The final fight could’ve been way better if they used all of Po’s past villains in an interesting way or maybe even made the cameos more fun, but they all mostly just stay quiet with only Tai Lung getting a few good lines in. And how come she didn’t steal Master Oogway’s kung fu? The shapeshifting during the fight was cool and the camera movements when she turned into Po was a nice touch but it’s very short lived, and she also turns into a big monster for a bit which is usually boring to watch. They under-utilised Zheng’s criminal buddies. Po and Zhen’s mediocre adventures along with Po’s dads’ journey which didn’t amount to much, took up so much screen time when they could’ve used it to build a convincing villain or even introduce the Furious Five. Instead we get this unnecessary watered down instalment. Like how are these directors and writers not inspired to top the previous films? I really don’t understand Hollywood studios sometimes, it just feels like a talentless cash grab. I don’t want this franchise to end coz I love the characters and world too much, I really hope they make a more impactful movie next time.