Kung Fu Panda Holiday
Netflix synopsis: As preparations for the Winter Feast build, Po is caught between his obligations as the Dragon Warrior and his family holiday traditions.
*Gideon commentary is in red.
*Sam commentary is in black.
The rundown: Kung Fu Panda
Holiday is the long-awaited Christmas special in the Dreamworks franchise. Po,
voiced by Jack Black, is the eponymous kung fu panda, a chubby fun dude who
became the Chosen One in the first film. Set in a fantasy version of Imperial
China, Po and the rest of his anthopomorphic animal friends must uphold
Confucian values and learn the secrets of martial arts. In this fertile ground
for creativity, Dreamworks found enough inspiration for a Christmas sequel.
The opening scene features some talking panda apparently named Po and his father, who I think is a talking bird of some sort. They're talking about the holiday dinner and how they invite all their talking animal friends to Father Talking Bird's restaurant because nobody should be alone during the holidays or something like that. They are very excited about this because I guess talking animals can't always get together over a big meal. At this point in the film, I started to wonder if they serve human meat since they're animals. That would have made this film a lot more enjoyable actually.
As
you can tell, Sam isn't a diehard fan of the Kung Fu Panda franchise. Po's Kung
Fu master Shifu, a runty David Carradine type, initiates the conflict of the
special. Po is granted the honor of hosting the Winter Feast. Kung Fu bigwigs
from all around will partake of Po's delicate sense of etiquette and decorum.
In other words, wacky hijinkswill ensue! Po's adopted goosefather creates the
conflict in this otherwise tedious exercise. He's s too much of jackass to
support his son's opportunity and refuses to attend the event. Can Po balance
his conflicting filial duties? Will kung fu or adoption win out? Will there be
fat jokes?
Luckily, Po the talking panda has a solution! He decides to hire his father the chef for the event and fires all the best chefs in Talking Animal Land before informing his father, the talking bird, of this opportunity. When he does tell his father, Father Talking Bird freaks out and says he can't do that because he has to serve all his talking animal friends who don't have as much money as the talking animals Po is hosting dinner for! How dare Po, the talking panda, suggest that his father, the talking bird, abandon his responsibilities to all those unfortunate talking animals? Po is distraught and commits suicide by injecting cyanide into his eyeballs, and the film is over.
Unfortunately, Po
must make a choice with less dire implications. He abandons Shifu -- who I
forgot to mention is Dustin Hoffman -- and the kung fu masters to host his
father's poor people feast. True to form, the masters are touched by Po's duty
to family and leave the fancy shindig to party with the peasants. Even dour,
rat-faced Shifu joins the fun, admitting to Po that they all discovered the
True Meaning of Winter Holiday™.
He said: Dreamworks is a
machine well-tuned to the process of churning out franchises. As far as their
intellectual properties go, Kung Fu Panda was actually my favorite. It wasn't
as tired and thin as the Shrek franchise or as joyless and loud as the
Madagascar-Penguin monolith. However, this made me rethink my fondness. Setting
a very western holiday in an Chinese context could have been interesting, but
Dreamworks took the lazy way out and settled on "Winter Holiday.”
It's the stuff of Fox News "War on
Christmas" narratives. I'm not attacking the flavorless secular nature of
it; I'm opposed to the stupid laziness of the execution. When Kung Fu Panda
Winter Special isn't being insipid and tired, it's frightfully loud and fast.
This isn't intended for adults, not by a long shot. The fight choreography and
kitchen prep montages are staged at a nauseating speed. This lazy little piece
of fluff made me feel like a bewildered senior citizen. Better refill my eggnog
while the dumb panda movie shuts up the grandkids.
Feminism: Absent; this is largely about homosocial relationships
Shoehorned winter cheer: Lots, in all its generic glory
Sequel potential: A weak entry in
an already tired franchise. Please don't make any more.
Manly sighs: Most
sighs per second so far
Motion sickness: Yes
Candy canes: 1.5
She said: The only good thing about this movie is that it was less than an hour long. I spent most of the film hoping it would end soon and it did! So I guess it's got that going for it. Aside from that, the film is terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible. I don't hate talking animal movies but I hated the animals in this so much that the fact that they talked really made it that much worse.
The animation was terrifying. Gideon and I were both drinking while watching it - we had to do something to get through it! - and physically recoiled several times because of how fast the animation was. The sequences of food preparation were especially uncomfortable. I would like to avoid chopping carrots for the next year or so lest I get Kung Fu Panda PTSD.
I also didn't like how disingenuous the moral of the movie was. It was tacked on and annoying and I really, really didn't like it. I didn't like this movie at all. I'd rather eat a raw onion like an apple than watch this again, and I hate onions.
Sappiness: I'm sure it was trying to be sappy but it was too awful to be anything, so I'd say none.
Gore level: A bunny tries to commit suicide a few times. Other than that there's nothing.
Cute animals: Unsurprisingly, none.
Loud kids who are supposed to be cute but are really annoying: None
Scenes that made me hate pandas and kung fu: ALL OF THEM
Candy canes: -1
Final score: 0.25 Candy Canes
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