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The film takes place some time after the first one, and Dragon Warrior Po (voiced by Jack Black) has a new quest, and a new enemy to vanquish - Shen (voiced by Gary Oldman). He is still with the Furious Five: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Crane (David Cross), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), and Monkey (Jackie Chan). Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) is still in the movie, but with lesser screentime. New characters introduced in the movie are the soothsayer (Michelle Yeo) and other kung fu masters Ox (Dennis Haysbert) and Croc (Jean-Claude Van Damme), while a third - Master Rhino (Victor Garber) is seen for a short while.
Po's story continues and takes a similar form to Spider-Man 2 in the Sam Raimi helmed trilogy: the hero has to come to terms with who he is. Po's past is
slowly revealed and, as has become the formula for heroes and villains, it is pointed out early on that he has a connection with the movie's villain.
Black delivers another good performance as the lead role. He still brings some of the quirkiness in his voice that makes him a unique actor in Hollywood today. From the Furious Five, Jolie still has the most lines and her character - Tigress - is the one with whom Po interacts the most, but the others aren't just props anymore. They were given more lines and play a bigger part. Gary Oldman brings a certain quality to Shen. To tell you the truth, I didn't even know it was him who was voicing the villain of the movie until I read it in the credits.
While admittedly, this installment wasn't as funny as the first one - though I still laughed a lot - it was still very much entertaining. This one added more drama and character development for Po and Tigress, and tried to show two sides of the coin with Po and Shen (that's as far close to spoiling as I'll go). The writers were able to make use of a minor detail that I noticed about the first film and weave it into a totally different story that will dictate not just this one but the subsequent one - as was suggested by the ending (though I don't know if they actually had that in mind already when they came up with the first one).
Side note: one of the kids who was watching with her family also made watching the movie entertaining. In the middle of it, during one of the quieter moments after a funny scene, we heard her ask her dad aloud: "Daddy, why aren't you laughing?" Having kids around laughing at some stuff and not laughing at the other stuff made it all the more entertaining for me.
Going back to the movie: another thing I found really fun was how they kept the essence of old kung fu movies where the fighters would call out their moves before actually executing them. I don't know if it's really a practice in real kung fu, but that tip of the hat to old kung fu films added a little something to the whole experience. Imagine if they did that in MMA fighting where Anderson Silva or Georges St. Pierre would call out a move before executing it. Hahaha, that would be funny... the closest we have to this would probably be in WWE when the wrestlers make introductory actions before actually doing their go-to move - Cena's "You can't see me" waving of his hand in front of his face, Randy Orton punching the floor before executing an RKO, or even Rock swinging his arms about before executing the People's Elbow.
Anyway, going back to the movie... it probably was not as humorous as the first one, but it certainly was better-made. From the story, to the way the plot was revealed, to the insertion of cute sequences, this one takes the cake as a more complete film. It is something that I'd love to see in 3D time and budget allowing, just because I know some of the sequences would look really cool if it was coming at me.
All in all, the film has earned four and a half Dragon Warrior-sized dumplings out of five for me. A family movie that the kids and the parents will most definitely enjoy.
Catch the HD trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdaMGcOyfjM
Kung Fu Panda 2 Official Page is at: http://www.kungfupanda.com/
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