Made to make money, that's it

To be fair to the “Kung Fu Panda” franchise, it’s been a series of generally pleasant diversions. Never as good as the best of their Dreamworks cousins “Shrek” and “How to Train Your Dragon”, you can at least say that the first three movies were consistent. That is not the case with part 4, which just feels strained, needless, and past the point of fresh. It’s unfortunate that when asked how many laughs are here, the answer is “skadoosh”.


Here Jack Black’s Po is enjoying his celebrity status, only to be told by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman that he is ready to ascend to being a spiritual leader, only before he can do that, he needs to pick and mentor a successor. The whole idea has Po less than enthused and his friends The Furious Five are off doing all sorts of adventures on their own. When a new villain known as the Chameleon (Viola Davis) starts messing with the spirit world, he almost seems happy for the distraction.


Along the way he’s given a new partner in Zhen (Awkwafina), a thieving fox who can’t believe Po is actually a Dragon warrior and treats him like a gullible boob. It’s pretty obvious where this new character is going to end up in the end, and the movie doesn’t even hide it either as Po inadvertently keeps imparting his fortune cookie wisdom to her as their journey rolls along.


But that shouldn’t mean that these two should have as generic and laughless a partnership as they do here. The trajectory of their relationship not only takes predictable turns but is only supplied with bad puns and lots of commotion meant to appease the very young. All the chases, fights, gambling and underground dens filled with talking animals who run them are energetic but lack any and all comic inspiration. Adding to the disappointment, Key Hu Quan voices one of these supporting characters, but is rendered nearly irrelevant.


Also struggling for relevancy are Bryan Cranston, playing Po’s Panda Dad, and James Hong as his stepdad. These two have very little to do in this story but were popular in the other films so I guess just had to be jammed in without much bother for how necessary they are. Viola Davis does her best as this super evil chameleon but even her role seems reduced to shouting and doing things that feel run of the mill for a sorceress character.


And that leads me to Po, who when he started out feels like he was based off Chris Farley in “Beverly Hills Ninja”. As voiced by Jack Black, he’s effortlessly enthusiastic and seems ready to take on all the fat ninja jokes that Farley never got to. But here those are wearing thin and his fight with the chameleon doesn’t really mean much for his continued development at all.


And Awkafina has basically been handed another sidekick character and been told to stretch her voice in order to gain something comical out of it. At this point, she just sounds exasperated, both in playing characters like this and with the continued dwindling of actual jokes she can work with.


That this movie is only 90 minutes long but the ending fight seems to take up a good half hour on its own is all you need to know. “Kung Fu Panda 4” just seems to be stretching itself to satisfy that feature length runtime. It’s looking for theatrical dollars but has all the necessity of a movie built for streaming. Something tells me that if it hits financial success again, we’re just going to get more of these movies, just like this one.