"Kung Fu Panda 3" Review

Kung Fu Panda 3 is an animated action comedy film from Dreamworks Animation and the third (and I think final) film in the Kung Fu Panda franchise, this one being directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Alessandro Carloni. The film picks up several years after the second movie, with the panda bear Po (voiced by Jack Black) taking over for Master Shifu (voiced by Dustin Hoffman) as teacher of the Furious Five when Shifu retires to master the art of chi and achieve true inner peace before his inevitable passing. Just as Po learns that he sucks at teaching, he also meets his biological father Li Shan (voiced by Bryan Cranston), who tells him of a secret panda village from whence Po was taken as a baby. Learning from an ancient text written by the late Master Oogway that the pandas in the village were once masters of chi themselves, Po agrees to travel to his home village with Li Shan when a warrior and former friend of Oogway, a yak master named Kai (voiced by J.K. Simmons), steals the chi of former masters and escapes the spirit realm on a quest to destroy Po and the entire Valley of Peace.

Now, to preface, I love the Kung Fu Panda movies. I think the first film is a fun, funny, and well-executed martial arts movie as well as a charming animated film that basically any age group can enjoy, and I think the second film is the best by far, with a deeper story, more involving action, and some great character development. Kung Fu Panda 3 is, in my opinion, the weakest of the franchise, but still really well crafted and better than most standard animated fare.

One of my favorite parts of the Kung Fu Panda franchise is that the films feel like genuine kung fu movies, both in story progression and style. As a fan of kung fu movies, I'm always really happy to see how well these films blend comedic slapstick fighting with actual kung fu choreography, as well as blending fairly Westernized humor and story conventions with genuine aspects of Eastern culture and thought, especially in the characters of Shifu and Oogway. Things like the spirit realm and the film's representation of chi are unsurprisingly presented with a lot of artistic license, but they work for the movie while also working well within actual Eastern thought - especially through a really cool story aspect in the third act regarding Po and the yin-yang symbol.

Besides the action, where Kung Fu Panda 3 remains strong is in its story and characters, particularly in the development of Po. Now, none of the Kung Fu Panda movies have considerable depth, but plenty of live-action kung fu movies can have the same said for them as well. They're well told, interesting stories that benefit well-crafted and exciting action scenes, and populated with characters we care about. Po's development as a character isn't entirely unpredictable, but is satisfying and well done, as is the final development of his relationship with Shifu, which I always thought was the main relationship throughout the franchise (as is the case with most kung fu franchises - the relationship between teacher and student). That's why I was happy when this film was announced - they don't feel like hastily produced sequels that exist just to further extend the reach of a lucrative franchise, but rather the logical next point in the greater story.

On top of that, this movie is just beautiful. All three of the Kung Fu Panda movies have been phenomenally well animated, and the action scenes and even some of the quieter scenes in this film are bright and gorgeous to look at, with the former providing some really impressive spectacle. The spirit realm sequences as well as much of the many environments the characters find themselves in are detailed and beautiful to look at, and all of this is elevated by Hans Zimmer's reliably great score.

If I have any problems with Kung Fu Panda 3, I guess it'd be the pacing and some of the humor. This movie serves as a good conclusion to the franchise and ties together its huge cast of characters pretty nicely. And while the humor in this film does work, I will say it is the most hit or miss of the series for me. There were a few running gags throughout the film that felt like very typical Dreamworks fare, which isn't necessarily bad but I always respected the rest of the series for generally avoiding them. The pacing of the story was fast to a fault, and I sometimes found myself wishing that a scene or shot would go on a little longer. And while the action in this movie isn't bad by any means and is really fun and well-executed as always, I will say it's the weakest of the three films, as well as having the least interesting villain (though he is really fucking cool, and his main power actually works thematically with the story very well). Kung Fu Panda 2 took all the best elements of the first film and did them better; this movie didn't really expand on those elements, but this is far from saying it's not good.

Overall, Kung Fu Panda 3 is a satisfying conclusion to the series that doesn't quite match the achievements of its predecessors, but is still fun, funny, fast paced, beautifully animated, and filled with some really exciting and well executed action scenes. This is a really solid trilogy that I hope Dreamworks doesn't fuck up. I look forward to marathoning these three movies on Blu-Ray someday. Before showing the rating, I want to point out that I saw this film with one of the worst crowds I've ever seen in my life so I was a little annoyed, so upon later viewings this could easily bump up to an A-. But for right now...

Grade: B+


Unrelated: I've finally made a Letterboxd account, archiving every movie I've seen and (eventually) giving them all a rating. If you'd like to see it, you can click here.