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Kung Fu Panda 4 Movie Review

Kung Fu Panda 4 is a 2024 animated action comedy film directed by Mike Mitchell and starring Jack Black. This is the best sequel in the franchise so far.

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“Now, who wants to do the right thing for the wrong reasons?“

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After Po is tapped to become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace, he needs to find and train a new Dragon Warrior, while a wicked sorceress plans to re-summon all the master villains whom Po has vanquished to the spirit realm. This is the first entry in this series in eight years and it is the best movie after the original of course. That is the only very strong one of the bunch while the others were all infinitely inferior.

There is one prime reason why I really enjoyed this entry and that is the villain. The Chameleon is this shape-shifting sorceress who would go on to steal the kung fu abilities from previous diseased fighters and become very powerful. That concept really worked for me and it was a great fantastical addition to the story.

Viola Davis was exceptional in the recent Hunger Games movie and she was wonderful here too. I am all here for Davis to play as many villains as possible as she is obviously having a lot of fun in these roles, which bodes well for the characters that she plays too. This movie has that cartoony logic and villainy that I really enjoy and I want it back in my animated movies, so I loved every scene with her.

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But of course Po ended up beating her in a very frustrating way and that has always been the main problem of these movies for me – they are too silly and comedic. I love cartoon comedies, but not when they happen at the expense of action and suspense. Action scenes should not be comedic or silly and this franchise continues to derail its superb martial arts sequences with that goofiness.

Awkwafina is once again playing an animated character and by this point she has done this role so many times that it lost its bite. This fox sidekick has such a familiar story that was frustratingly predictable – it’s the same old arc of a sidekick who becomes a traitor and eventually has a redemption and goes back to being a sidekick again. I loved the dynamic between the two and they were quite wonderful together, but the story was clichéd.

Master Shifu is sidelined here, which was quite frustrating, but both the biological and adopted father of Po’s were so much fun together and I continue to find their interplay very amusing. Po himself continues to be an overly stupid and goofy main character whom I never loved. The Furious Five are not here, but there are these thieves who stole the show with their hilarious one-liners. Still, the thieving, aggressive babies were too similar to that baby from ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’.

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Visually, Kung Fu Panda 4 is just as beautiful as the previous entries, though it lacked some of the artistic touches from the original. Still, I continue to find the attention to detail in clothing, weaponry and architecture to be stupendous. The movie transports you to China so well, though I wished for more world building – Juniper City could have been more explored. The score, sound and action choreography are all excellent, but the humor was overwhelming and the plot quite pedestrian.