Reviews

I remember when The Hobbit films started to stink. It was when one iteration deep into the series featured just a bunch of fights and rescues, usually involving castles on steep hills or weirdos resident in dark underground caves.

King Fu Panda 4 checked all those boxes with still more imported scenes from other films. Perhaps I'm sore they missed Mary Poppins in the copy fest.

What a dud. It lost any anchor it once had in the whimsy and wisdom department, and instead went with predictable, silly 2024 jargon put into the mouths of critters supposed to be somewhere in old China. This Panda is too modern in its dialogue ("modern" here not being a good thing) and too detached from the heart and soul of the early Panda. It's as Chinese as the current regime governing that poor country, which is to say not Chinese at all.

No literacy left in mainstream Hollywood. Capable writers have apparently left the room.

This actually ended up being an ensemble piece by a superb and gifted cast. Though the script had a very few instances of wooden dialogue, those were largely superseded by a perfectly cast film. (If you're Catholic, you knew instantly that the Owen Wilson character was not actually a priest, but waiting for the reveal was itself an entertainment.)

Each actor added a dimension to the film, and each used their lines to create for us understandable characters with understandable emotions.

The film imports many features of the Disneyland attraction - since it is the west coast version of the Mansion that provides the external visual cues. Inside and outside, we meet the flying ghosts, the lady trapped in the crystal ball, the graveyard, the grave digger and his dog, and the hitchhiking ghosts. The best incorporation of the ride was the crystal ball and its prisoner - perfectly incorporated into the story.

It was fairly intense for a kids' Disney movie.

Silly hero-type with odd superpower and spotty relationship with his daughter finds his daughter has been fiddling with power that ends up taking them into another what, exactly? Another world? A lesser world? A greater world? Naturally his mother in-law (Michelle Pfeiffer) held a secret that if only the daughter had known she wouldn't have been fiddling with this power.

They end up in this adjacent/nearby/lesser/greater/alternative world, and adventures commence, father-daughter mend their relationship, and mother-in-law and father-in-law save the day, with giant mechanized ants, after the usual almost victory then setback then somewhat bigger victory then setback then triumph! And then some incomprehensible post-credit scenes.

A poorly written sub-ordinary story you've seen in every movie since done the first time long ago, but mostly in Star Wars IV, V and VI.

Bar scene with weirdo aliens? Check.

Living squid-like creature as drink stirrer? Check.

Jabba the Hutt type character but played without make-up by Bill Murray? Check.

Dialogue as witty and creative as Star Wars I and II (which is to say it was neither witty nor creative)? Check.

And a narrative that had all of the surprise of a remake of Cinderella? Check.

Who writes this drivel? Where has the creativity gone? The only actor in this mess who was competent was Ms. Pfieffer. The others all acted like they first read the script about four minutes before being filmed.

One star. And I'm being generous.

There is an assortment of films whose actors and acting are so top-notch you don't notice you're watching a bad script, film version. This is that film. (Oddly, another in this line is Mary Poppins II, also with Emily Blunt.)

There are too many obvious villains given nothing original to say. Staged scenes look staged. The romantic twinkle comes to our love duo exactly on time. The self-outed gay brother is given little more to do than be picky about his wardrobe, his cosmetics, and his tea, while late in the film he suddenly becomes a prize boxer with near superhero skills (perhaps the scriptwriter was doing penance for the earlier stereotypes).

The leads took this mess and made something of it. They were funny. They were fun. They clicked. They Made It All Work.

Thank them. Don't thank the screenwriter(s). I counted 1,128 different parallel plot lines all configured to close in on each other about 20 minutes before the film's end. Thankfully, 704 were resolved.

I forgot. The CGI. If you like CGI that is so mediocre it manages to repeatedly draw attention to itself, here's your film. A leopard the size of a small dinosaur? Give the CGI guy smaller crayons next time.