Having enjoyed the first two in the series, I was rather dismayed to sense a lukewarm reception for this. Sure, it blew away Norm of the North in its first duel, but even weeks before Zootopia stole its thunder, few people seemed interested in it. Even the dumb-looking Sing is ahead by a majority of estimates. Well, as one of the minority of viewers who preferred the second movie to the first, I thought I might beg to differ again. Besides, I saw nothing to lose by streaming.
You've likely seen ads indicating that fanboy-turned-champion Po (Jack Black) finally reunites with other pandas, whom he had presumed wiped out. As hinted at the end of KFP2, the first one to find him is his original father, Li (Bryan Cranston), provoking the jealousy of adoptive father Mr. Ping (James Hong). This is not as incidental to the main conflict as you'd think, for the latest national menace, the oddly solid spirit of a bull named Kai (J.K. Simmons), can be defeated only by a "master of qi" -- pandas' historical area of expertise. Po accepts Li's invitation to the hidden panda village, where, if he doesn't master qi in time, at least he'll learn more about his identity, the question of which is plaguing him once more.
If you were hoping to learn more about Po's posse, the Furious Five, I'm afraid that Tigress (Angelina Jolie) still commands easily the most attention, followed by Mantis (Seth Rogen) and Crane (David Cross). I do see more personality in Monkey (Jackie Chan) than before, but poor Viper (Lucy Liu) still barely gets a word in edgewise. As for other returning heroes, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) enjoys more importance than in KFP2, but naturally, he doesn't have nearly as much to teach Po as in KFP1. Thanks to forays into the spirit realm, Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) finally reappears as well. I'm less convinced of the value of bit players like Master Croc (Jean-Claude Van Damme).
Perhaps the prime aspect to disappoint me was how much time Po spends just hanging with the pandas. Their version of "training" is about the opposite of anyone else's: They eat, sleep, and have fun. Fortunately, the flick moves along too quickly in general to bore me.
I'm not sure what to make of Kai. It seems that after too many viewers felt sorry for Tai Lung, the writers decided to give us two clearly irredeemable villains back to back. Kai, despite being undead, brings a little less darkness than Shen, if only because he doesn't explicitly kill. Instead, he steals kung fu masters' qi, turns them into jade trinkets, and sometimes turns the trinkets into semi-autonomous golems that fight and serve as his cameras. So Newt Scamander wasn't the only blockbuster character last year to evoke a Pokémon trainer. What bugs me most about Kai is his backstory: He sounded like a nice guy up until the instant he learned of qi, whereupon greed made him such a monster that his friend Oogway saw fit to kill him. He also blames Oogway for banishing common knowledge of him. Dude, how many warriors are widely remembered after 500 years?
Nevertheless, it strikes me that the main weaknesses of KFP3 -- reliance on fat-guy slapstick, a trite moral of dubious value, overuse of celebrity voices -- are nothing new to the series. Maybe it hasn't gotten worse exactly, but the bulk of the audience was hoping for something a little fresher after a five-year absence from the silver screen. I have to wonder about the plans for three more entries; this one already feels like an ending threequel.
On the plus side, we do get basically all the good things we've come to expect. The visuals make a splash, not least when magic's involved. The animal fight choreography is inspired. The Chinese flavoring is apparently informed by some measure of research. And yes, it gets cute, but even the panda cubs don't push it over the edge on that front.
It's not the best animal animation of the year. It's not even the best 2016 animation set in the ancient Orient. But it could be seen as a fine compromise between them: more colorful and less tragic than Kubo, with more video game-like combat than Zootopia. I wouldn't be surprised if the Academy gave it a nod -- provided a pool of five nominees, not three, to be shared with Moana and probably Finding Dory.
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