Crew
Director – Mike Mitchell, Co-Director – Stephanie Ma Stine, Screenplay – Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger & Darren Lemke, Producer – Rebecca Huntley, Music – Steve Mazzaro & Hans Zimmer, Visual Effects Supervisor – Betsy Nofsinger, Animation Supervisors – Julien Bocabeille, Ludovic Bouancheau, Brooke Shay Bradford, Laurent Caniero, Hans Dastrup, Patrick Giusiano, Anthony Gray & Mark Roennigke, Production Design – Paul Duncan. Production Company – Dreamworks Animation.
Voices
Jack Black (Po), Awkwafina (Zheng), Bryan Cranston (Li Shan), James Hong (Mr Ping), Viola Davis (The Chameleon), Dustin Hoffman (Master Shifu), Ian McShane (Tai Lung), Ke Huy Quan (Han), Ronny Chieng (Fish), Lori Tan Chinn (Granny Boar)
Plot
Master Shifu tells Po that he must now relinquish being the Dragon Warrior and become a spiritual master. Po does not like this idea and struggles with finding a replacement as the Dragon Warrior. He then encounters the fox Zheng who warns him about the villain The Chameleon, who can use sorcerous powers to transform into the likeness of any animal. Po and Zheng set out on a journey to Juniper City to take on The Chameleon. The Chameleon is seeking to conduct a ritual during the blood moon that will unleash Tai Lung and claims his kung fu powers but she needs Po’s staff to do so. Fearing the worst, Po’s two fathers Li Shan and Mr Ping set out to aid him.
DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda series has become one of most successful ongoing modern animation franchises. Beginning with Kung Fu Panda (2008), which featured an all-star cast in each of the voice roles, the original made $215 million in international release. DreamWorks has released three sequels with Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) and Kung Fu Panda 4 here.
I must confess I took my time when it came to reviewing Kung Fu Panda 4. I had written up all the previous films but felt zero enthusiasm for doing so for yet another entry in the series. Mainstream Animation in the 2010s/20s has become so formulaic that any notion of original releases has all but disappeared and in its place all that we get are endlessly recycled IPs where familiar characters are put through the same moves with minimal variations and additions to their milieu. Indeed, it is debatable if the original Kung Fu Panda would even have been made in today’s animation environment. DreamWorks started well in the early 2000s, seeming to offer a serious challenge to Disney and Pixar but by the later 2010s their output has become IP regurgitation – although The Wild Robot (2024), which came out the same year as this does offer some hope for original content.
Kung Fu Panda 4 gives us more of the same as before. What is noticeable is how most of the regulars from the previous films have been entirely sidelined – The Furious Five are said to be away on a mission and of the group only Seth Rogen has a return speaking part again (so small I didn’t even notice which scene he appeared in). Quite possibly this is to cut the cost of star names and their reappearance fees. Although with Po being retired as the Dragon Warrior, you get the impression that this is tended as the swan song for the series. Of the returnees all that we get are James Hong and Dustin Hoffman who have been in all the films and Bryan Cranston as Po’s birth father who was introduced in Kung Fu Panda 3 and that is it.
Director Mike Mitchell emerged out of live-action comedies such as Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo (1999), Surviving Christmas (2004) and the superhero film Sky High (2005). He branched out into animation with Shrek Forever After (2010) and followed this with Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011), the live-action sequences in The Spongebob Movie: Out of Water (2015), was co-director of DreamWorks’ Trolls (2016) and of The Lego Movie 2 (2019).
I am not at all a fan of Mike Mitchell’s films and find most of them to be excruciatingly inane. Sky High was clumsy and unfunny, Shrek Forever After was the nadir of the series and Trolls left me wanting to tear out my eyeballs. The sole exception I will make is The Lego Movie 2. Thus I had no high expectations of Kung Fu Panda 4 when his name came up. To Mitchell’s credit, it doesn’t consist of the inane slapstickery that many of his other films do. On the other hand, much of the film consists of comic fight gags based around the bar tippling on a rock peak, or of Po taking on various opponents at the start. These are okay but quickly evaporate into the instantly forgettable.
What Kung Fu Panda 4 does have going for is artistry pushed to fantastic heights. The backgrounds and designs of the various cities and towns and the way the 3D camera swoops down and around people climbing the sides of buildings and the like is animation pushed to something that is art. It is just a shame that it must come in a film where none of the intended children’s audience are going to appreciate it.
Trailer here