We are now in the budget-conscious era of DreamWorks Animation cinema. In its days as an independent outfit, DreamWorks titles would regularly rack up budgets ranging from $145-175 million. Not every title the studio produced needed such exorbitant prices (did Mr. Peabody & Sherman or Turbo need to cost only slightly less than the first Dune installment?), so it wasn't surprising when Universal purchased the studio and began mandating much lower budgets for new DreamWorks titles. Opting for tamer budgets has inspired some lovely new visual schemes in modern DreamWorks titles like The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which have traded in uber-realism for excitingly abstract stylized imagery. Going cheaper has given more wiggle room for these projects to take visual risks.
Unfortunately, Kung Fu Panda 4 doesn't benefit from its reduced budget. The Last Wish leaned into a significantly smaller price tag than its predecessor to create a whole new visual language for Shrek installments. Kung Fu Panda 4 just tries to do a standard Kung Fu Panda adventure in way too lean confines. The end result is a movie that keeps reminding you of better more lavish installments in this franchise while also failing to justify why we're still dragging out this animated saga.
Dragon Warrior Po (Jack Black) is still a panda who fights for good, but it's time for him to take on a new role in his duties as a warrior. Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) has revealed to Po that he must choose a successor for the position for the position of the Dragon Warrior. Po has no plans to give up his status as the Dragon Warrior and he gets a great excuse to kick that can down the road once the villainous Tai Lung (Ian McShane) suddenly reappears. This isn't just the return of an old foe, though. This is the new baddie The Chameleon (Viola Davis) posing as Tai Lung as part of her evil plan to take over the world. Teaming up with experienced thief Zhen (Awkwafina), Po will need to take down this new nemesis and uncover an unexpected ally in the scheming Zhen.
There's no question that the best parts of Kung Fu Panda 4 are when director Mike Mitchell leans into unique visual flourishes that feel incredibly unique compared to the previous three Panda installments. Many flashback scenes this go-around, for instance, feature CG characters inhabiting intentionally abstract hand-drawn spaces. This motif is best exemplified by a flashback showing an adolescent Zhen growing adept as a thief. The passage of time is communicated with a spinning camera across an unbroken shot that shows the white fox engaging in all kinds of criminal behavior against different vividly colored backgrounds. It's a shot that echoes a famous scene from Hunt for the Wilderpeople, not typical Kung Fu Panda imagery!
Unfortunately, the default animation style of Kung Fu Panda 4 just opts to mimic the previous movies but with way less polish and budgetary restrictions more apparent than ever. New location Juniper City, for instance, is just a rehash of the bustling Gongmen City from Kung Fu Panda 2. Apparently only ten animals live in the Valley of Peace now while several pre-existing characters once voiced by costly celebrity voices amusingly just stand around in the background of certain scenes like massive action figures. Most disappointingly of all, the fun and zip of Kung Fu Panda fight scenes has been lost. director Jennifer Yuh Nelson's deft touch with executing lively action sequences is sorely missed. In the past, it felt like the characters in this universe were practically bursting with energy. Now, Po and friends typically have rigid movements when they're just standing around talking while their physical skirmishes are totally forgettable. Even The Chameleon's ability to shapeshift into various other animals doesn't result in exciting new possibilities for action sequences and instead allows Kung Fu Panda 4 to remind viewers of adversaries from past movies.
Returning Kung Fu Panda scribes Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger teamed up with DreamWorks Animation veteran Darren Lemke (who colloborated with Mike Mitchell on Shrek Forever After) to cook up the Kung Fu Panda 4 screenplay. Alas, this trio is also content to just regurtitate elements of past Kung Fu Panda movies by embracing a plotline about Po struggling to accept a new role of leadership that hews too closely to his personal conflict in Kung Fu Panda 3. Credit where credit is due, their script does know the necessity of slowing down for some quieter moments (even if the more vulnerable dialogue is tin-eared). Unfortunately, too many of the big action and narrative beats are generically realized this go-around. Most disappointingly, a potential subversion of the norms of how Kung Fu Panda movies end is quickly thrown away in favor of a more generic punch-heavy climax. It's a flaw that encapsulates how Kung Fu Panda 4 keeps showing audiences the ingredients for something new and then serves them a dish they've had before.
If there's any entertainment to be found here in Kung Fu Panda 4, it's in a subplot involving Po's two fathers, goose Mr. Ping (James Hong) and panda Li Shan (Bryan Cranston), going on a quest to help their offspring. It's always when long-running franchises find glorious chemistry in unexpected chemistry pairings and the Ping/Shan shenanigans fit that bill nicely. Hong and Cranston's vocal performances mesh well together and the duo delivers the funniest moments of the entire movie with some very solid line readings. Jack Black remains as amusing as ever as Po, while franchise newcomer Ke Huy Quan is also an MVP of Kung Fu Panda 4 thanks to his delightful work as a violence-obsessed Sunda pangolin. Unfortunately, in terms of the voice cast, Awkwafina doesn't quite click as Zhen. Despite showing skills with more emotionally complex live-action performances in titles like The Farewell, Awkwafina just sounds off anytime she has to get vulnerable or serious as this character. Lines meant to lend insight into Zhen's psyche just register as hollow thanks to Awkwafina's line readings.
That problem may come down due to misdirection on the part of Mitchell, a filmmaker whose career is littered with helming family-friendly sequels (Shrek Forever After, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, the live-action segments of The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water) that struggle so hard to capture the magic of their predecessors. Whatever wit Mitchell brought to Sky High in 2005 has largely been absent from his forays into animated sequels and Kung Fu Panda 4, unfortunately, continues this trend. The problems with this follow-up go far beyond a noticeably reduced budget. Kung Fu Panda 4 doesn't sink to the nadir of DreamWorks Animation fare, but boy is it a step down from what audiences are accustomed to when it comes to the big-screen exploits of the Dragon Warrior.
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