Kung Fu Panda 4 - Though it Still Had Some of the Charm, but This Latest Installment did not Feel Like the Best in the Series

I saw the trailer to this movie a couple of weeks ago in the theater and thought it looked funny and was looking forward to see it. I was quite surprised when I found out that before it was shown in the US, the Indonesian cinema chains already provided a special show on Sunday noon and once every day till its wide release on this Wednesday. Since my wife and I were not having anything urgent to do, we decided to see this in one of the studios that played the movie yesterday. All right, I'll get right to it then.

Brief Story Line

After years of becoming Dragon Warrior, Po (Jack Black - The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle etc) was told by his Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman - Meet the Fockers, Finding Neverland etc) that he would elevate and become the next Spiritual Master like Oogway and must find his successor. But Po was not keen on the new title and preferred to remain as warrior where he could fight against villains. So when he came across a fox thief called Zhen (Awkwafina - Migration, Crazy Rich Asians etc) who told him about latest threat in the form of sorceress Chameleon (Viola Davis - How to Get Away with Murder TV series, The Woman King etc), Po immediately embarked on a journey to fight against her. 

Meanwhile Po's adoptive father Ping (James Hong - Turning Red, Blade Runner etc) and his biological father Li Shan (Bryan Cranston - Argylle, Why Him? etc) were worried about his latest adventure, especially when they heard about the ruthlessness and unique ability of Chameleon. 

So what would happen to Po? And how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Honestly I was not aware there would be another sequel to this franchise as I thought they have closed the chapter before. As I wrote in one of my earliest posts of Kung Fu Panda 3 (you could see on the very long and detailed plot there), that movie felt to have come full circle. But I guess DreamWorks thought of making more money from this popular Intellectual Property and came up with an idea for new movie. Anyway, I did not really mind another one as long as it could still deliver the same quality and hilarity like its predecessors. 

It turned out that this one was OK but felt a bit short of expectation. There were still the trademark crazy behaviors by Po and some hilarious moments as well, but my wife and I felt there were not enough of those that made us laugh out loud continuously. And some of the funniest scenes were already shown in the trailer (which my wife regretted as it would make her enjoy more had she not seen it before). In addition, the fights were not as intense as before either. We both felt the climax was not too satisfactory and a bit over simplistic, unlike the time when Po had to fight all his previous enemies. Even the plot was rather predictable too, with a twist that was hinted so clearly that did not become a surprise when it occurred.

And without the beloved Furious Five, the film also felt a bit lacking in term of providing excitement to us. The writers tried by giving more screen time to Po's two fathers and introduced us with new characters, including Zhen to cover them. But taking over not one or two but all five of them seemed to be too much of a challenge. For me, the complete difference between Furious Five and Po was one of the best part that made the movies so interesting. But hey, at least we could see glimpses of them (you would understand if you had seen this movie). Oh aside from those names I mentioned above, we also got support characters like Han, the leader of thieves (Ke Huy Quan - Everything Everywhere All At Once, Loki season 2 etc), Granny Boar, the owner of a restaurant (Lori Tan Chinn - Awkwafina is Nora from Queens sitcom etc), Captain Fish (Ronny Chieng - M3GAN etc) and of course Tai Lung (Ian McShane - John Wick movies etc) with few others.

After reading more on the movie, I found that the director Mike Mitchell (The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, Trolls etc) wanted to focus more on Po, which probably explain leaving out the Furious Five completely (either that or maybe they were just having scheduling conflict). And whether or not this would have any impact will be seen in the next few weeks when the movie hit the US and other markets. Btw, there was no mid or post end credit scene for this 94 minutes movie, but we could listen to the cover song of Baby One More Time sung by Tenacious D during the closing credits. 

So if you are still interested in finding out what's in store for our favorite Po the Dragon Warrior, then you could give this a try. It might not exactly provide us the best of time like it used to, but some of its common traits are still available here. Plus the animation was still very good (the lovely Valley of Peace scenery with the fallings of petal flowers were very beautiful). And I think it's still entertaining for all ages as per the classification in Indonesia. For me and my wife though, we would have loved it more if the things I mentioned were done differently. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars