"Kung Fu Panda 3" | MOVIE REVIEW

Hey, guys! I know I’ve been gone for, what was it, like a month or two now? I’ve been super busy with exams, and then a summer job, and then multiple vacations. In short, I’ve had my hands full and I haven’t had as much time to write as I’d like. But now I’m here to give you a new, really quick review of...

Incidentally, I have several more of these that will be coming out over the course of the past couple of days.

So, Kung Fu Panda 3 is the third installment (if you haven’t already guessed) of the Kung Fu Panda series. When it comes to animated movie series (that aren’t Toy Story), the third installment is usually where the series feels like it starts to drag along unnecessarily. However, that isn’t the case with Kung Fu Panda 3.

This movie, I thought, was actually pretty good. The animation was fluid, the voice acting was great, and the characters were all as lovable and as bad-ass as you remember them to be. And, surprisingly, the chemistry between Po and his dad (played by Bryan Cranston) was really heartfelt. They were a good pair and you bought them as characters, and it was a believable father-son relationship.

And if there are two things the Kung Fu Panda movies pride themselves on, it’s great action and awesome villains, and this movie had both. J.K. Simmons’ character was this sort-of ethereal warlord, and he was everything you expected an ethereal warlord to be: bad-ass and powerful. And the action sequences were great, especially in the second half of the last battle.

However, though, there were several aspects of this movie that I just didn’t really buy. To sum things up, Kung Fu Panda 3 is this series’ equivalent of Return of the Jedi – it’s a good movie, but it isn’t as good as the first two. And if you really think about it, this movie does have some parallels to Return of the Jedi. For example – and without spoiling anything – the last battle in this movie reminded me so much of the battle of Endor, wherein you have one half of the battle is really intense and entertaining to watch and the other half just leaves you like…

I don’t understand why this has to be this way.

And you hardly really feel the stakes in this movie, which is a bit of a bummer because, as I mentioned, this movie’s villain is an ethereal warlord. The dude can kill each and every one of the kung fu masters with his bare hands, but the last battle kinda takes away from that and, as such, you don’t really feel it as much.

But, in the true spirit of being a series’ equivalent of Return of the Jedi, this movie is still a pretty enjoyable one, and I think it’s worthy of a Jar Jar thumbs-up.
 

So, those are my thoughts on Kung Fu Panda 3. Have you seen it? Let me know what you think about it. And, as always, this has been Rafa – and stay classy.