This is probably my favourite of the franchised animated action-comedies, but I think we are now clearly running out of conceptual steam. With "Po" being told by "Master Shifu" that it is now time for him to move onwards and upwards - much to his chagrin - he must recruit a new dragon warrior so he can retreat to more cerebral pastimes. Luckily, though, the "Chameleon" has designs on obtaining all the powers from those now consigned to the nether realm and using the powers of Kung Fu to take over the world. "Po" has to be put his promotion on hold and along with his new-found, and useful, foxy friend "Zhen" try to thwart these heinous ambitions. Though there's plenty of action and self-deprecating dialogue the storyline really is too much of a recycled affair. Even the panda has been drawn into the multi-verse and to be frank, I'm a bit bored with that theme now - especially as it's never really accompanied by much in the way of jeopardy. Yes, this is an entirely predicable story that, in this case, misses out on the characterisations of his pals from the "Furious Five". It's watchable and the story well paced; there's some fun to be had in the wobbly, mountain-top, tavern but I think I've already forgotten most of it.

CinemaSerf
2024-03-29

I'm into movies that simulate the 'watching a video game' experience. Classic Shang Tsung end boss. Shadow of the Colossus gameplay. Maybe a diss to Dune? It's predictable and full of dumb shit but I found myself enjoying it. Jables does good. I found abrasion to be front-loaded and maybe he mellows out but... a muted, yet powerful performance. I did smoke weed during the first few minutes. I love Awkwafina.

Chandler Danier
2024-04-18

Out of nowhere, this fox character manifests! Out of nowhere, this panda character manifests! Out of nowhere, these villain characters manifest! We have got some top notch reviewers on this website, Souljaboytellem! Dialog writers need to remove certain words from their joke book, like "method", as in method acting. When I hear method acting, I think Jared Leto. Associating Jared Leto's "method acting" with your movie probably isn't a good thing. Method acting and Jared Leto occupied real estate rent free for the entirety of this movie. It didn't help that they couldn't stop themselves from thinking "it's so nice, we'll say it twice". The story is predictable, made worse by the spoon feeding. To add insult to injury, the back and forth between Po and Zhen up until the "big stink" is good enough to maybe throw you off if you haven't seen it a dozen times already or if they hadn't spelled it out. Po's dads are fine. He has a biological widowed father and an adopted father. We know these characters. Their subplot is kinda unnecessary but the "two dad's" thing isn't rocket science.

Sejian
2024-05-22

<em>'Kung Fu Panda 4'</em> is much like its predecessors for me, I'm cool with them but they don't hit any deeper than being just solid movies. I had to watch a recap of the previous entries, naturally, and didn't remember much, aside from the cast and main characters. I reckon I'll be saying the exact same thing in X amount of months about this one, that doesn't necessarily mean a film is bad though - because this release isn't. The voices we hear are perfectly satisfactory, from Jack Black to Awkwafina, Viola Davis (the best, away from lead) and the rest. The music here is good. There is one piece of the score, which is heard a couple of times and during the end credits, that must be a homage of sorts to television show <em>'Dexter'</em> - weird connection granted, but it sounds practically exactly the same to me. On the note of the sound, I enjoyed Tenacious D's rock cover of "...Baby One More Time". I listened to it an embarrassing amount when it first released alongside this movie, the video was admittedly part of the reason why - I'm always a fan of seeing film casts in music videos. There's a decent story told, alongside nice animation. It'll no doubt be forgettable to me personally, but I can still acknowledge it as something that I deem passable.

r96sk
2025-02-11