Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

“You want to see? It’s a gift. It’s your parting gift… in that it will part you. Part of you here, part of you there, and part of you way over there, staining the wall! ” – Shen

Number of Times Seen – 1 (19 Mar 2019)

Brief Synopsis – As PO seeks to find out more about his own origin, the team of Kung Fu Masters must try and stop a villainous Peacock who wants to take over the area with the use of a deadly new weapon.

My Take on it – This is a film that I never really had much interest in seeing before now and wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

This is definitely an interesting addition to the franchise since it is able to move forward quite well with the lives of the characters.

Unfortunately, like many sequels, this film mostly feels as if it’s trying to mirror the success of the first film and fails to be very original or unique in the ideas presented.

The story as presented isn’t as strong in both plot and message as the first film was and this hurts things a bit also.

They are able to give us some great animated action and combat sequences that work quite well and this obviously adds to the enjoyment of this kind of film.

I was really impressed with the way that the animators chose to present the fighting style of the main villain, who is a peacock, since when one normally things of a peacock, having a fluid kung fun fighting stance and method is probably one of the last things that one would expect.

The voice cast is once again quite talented and do a nice job here and it was nice seeing most of the voice actors from the first film returning here.

Bottom Line – Interesting addition to the franchise, but still feels very unoriginal in the way that it takes the story.  The voice cast is once again great with most of them returning from the original.  The story of this movie isn’t as strong as the previous film and that hurts this film a bit.  The animated action sequences are done quite well and that actually helps it a bit since it’s more enjoyable.  The way that the animators decided to make a peacock fight is great because it looks so fluid and it really dispels any preconceived notions of how effective a villain a peacock can be.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – After Kung Fu Panda (2008) was released, DreamWorks Animation planned a second movie with the subtitle “Pandamoneum”, which was changed by 2010 to “The Kaboom of Doom”, before simply being retitled to “Kung Fu Panda 2”. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (6/10)

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