THE BEAR NECESSITIES
Kung Fu Panda 4
Cast: (The voices of) Jack Black, Awkwafina,
Viola Davis Directors: Mike Mitchell, Stephanie Stine
Duration: 1 h 34 m
There’s a scene in Kung Fu Panda 4 that resonates with anyone who’s struggled to meditate. The heroic panda Po (Jack Black) plops under a blossoming peach tree, relaxes his paws and attempts to concentrate on a mantra.
“Inner peace, inner peace,” he chants, but his mind can’t stay still. “Inner peace. Dinner please. Dinner with peas. In a sesame-soy glaze.”
Spell broken, Po pads off having summed up this frantic sequel in, well, a pea. It aspires to be Taoism for tykes, but it’s just too fidgety.
The Kung Fu Panda films are like a neon sign of a yin and yang, a fragile balance of philosophy and fat jokes. In the beginning, Black’s Po was a klutz who trained himself to earn the title of Dragon Warrior, a name given to his region’s greatest martial artist. The idea was that if a panda could high-kick, the rest of us could do anything. But the franchise is turning 16. Now Po’s guide, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), has promoted him into a spiritual leader. He must, against his will, hand over the Dragon Warrior title to someone else.
Black has a mystical hold on kids, including those who hadn’t yet been born the last time he voiced this slapstick bear in 2016.
But new-to-the-series directors Mike Mitchell and Stephanie Stine seem less confident than the previous filmmakers that Zen sections of their screenplay can keep the youths entertained.
Joined by a kleptomaniac fox (Awkwafina), a brusque pangolin (Ke Huy Quan) and a trio of ferocious little bunnies, Po sets out to defeat a sorcerer named The Chameleon (Viola Davis). Davis’s baddie has almost no backstory, but the Egot-winning actor rages so commandingly that you don’t notice.
The humour is often anarchic — a style that suits the production — but when the film slows down, it has a gift for reworking classic gags. The best gag comes when Po tiptoes through a rooftop of napping Komodo dragons, desperate to stay quiet. I thought briefly that Charlie Chaplin might cheer this sequence. Twenty seconds later, there was a fart joke and I changed my mind.ωωω