Movie Review

Jack Black and company revisit familiar ground in Kung Fu Panda 4

Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and Po (Jack Black) in Kung Fu Panda 4

Photo courtesy of DreamWorks Animation

Since Dreamworks Animation made its debut in the late 1990s, it has had some highly successful franchises, including Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon. It hasn’t been shy about doling out sequels either, as each of those has received at least three entries. Only Shrek received a fourth film until now when, eight years after the previous film, Kung Fu Panda 4 has finally been released.

As always, it centers on the panda Po (voiced by Jack Black), who’s enjoying his status as the Dragon Warrior. But when Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) tells him that Po is to become the new Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace, Po must find someone worthy of succeeding him as Dragon Warrior. A cursory search yields some impressive candidates, but Po is not exactly ready and willing to cede his title just yet.

He’s even less interested when The Chameleon (Viola Davis), a shape-shifter who can literally take the form of anyone she comes across, starts to make plans to summon all the master villains Po had previously vanquished. Using the help of new friend Zhen (Awkwafina), Po sets out to find The Chameleon, with others in his life, like Po’s dad Li (Bryan Cranston), on their own adventures.

Directed by Mike Mitchell and Stephanie Stine, and written by Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger, and Darren Lemke, the film has all the hallmarks of the previous three Kung Fu Panda movies. That means that it has plenty of comic hijinks and the occasional whiz-bang fight sequences, but not a lot of surprises. The filmmakers aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel; they’re just looking to deliver a similar experience to what fans of the series have loved before.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that approach, it also doesn’t make for a very stimulating watch. Each of the returning characters acts exactly how they’ve acted in the past, even when faced with the new situations and/or new characters. By the time you get to the fourth film, there needs to be something that the audience hasn’t seen before, and there’s precious little that this film has to offer in that regard.

The film’s two major new characters – The Chameleon and Zhen – are a mixed bag. Despite the film being weighed down by Po doing the same old, same old, The Chameleon actually makes for a pretty good villain. Zhen makes for an interesting presence as a character, but the fact that she’s voiced by Awkwafina – who’s been in no fewer than seven animated movies in the past five years – distracts from her story arc.

Black is as good as ever as the voice of Po, even if the character doesn’t get as many big moments as in past films. The key for any good animated character is to be distinctive, so in that way Cranston, Davis, Awkwafina, and Dustin Hoffman work well, even if not all of them are showcased properly. Other well-known names like Seth Rogen, Ke Huy Quan, Ronny Chieng, and YouTuber Mr. Beast don’t make much of an impact.

At this point, a property like Kung Fu Panda is only being made to continue its profitability for its parent company. The fourth film may give young fans some nostalgia for characters they grew up with, but it’s a far cry from the best the animation world has to offer.

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Kung Fu Panda 4 opens in theaters on March 8.

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Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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