Kung Fu Panda Panda

Sequel time, with this follow up to a movie that wasn't made by Pixar. (Yes, there are a few non-Pixar animating studios, but let's be honest. Animated movies fall into two categories 'Pixar' and 'non-Pixar' and there isn't much point differentiating the latter. But if we must, this is the better of the non-Pixar studios, and generally delivers good films... even if they aren't Pixar.)

In this movie, Po moves from being the Chosen One of Legend to being the Chosen One of Prophecy, and must come into his powers to defeat the evil... hang on, no that was the first movie... no, wait, it's the second one as well. Although in this movie, we don't get many, many, many hilarious (honest, guv, they were hilarious, the movie clearly thought so) sequences of Po trying to learn kung fu. Instead we get several fight scenes of the Five against the same enemies time and again. And the last battle, where we all see what was coming finally came-ing. Oh, and there's back story, but aside from really over-the-topping creating a cute baby panda, we all know what happened, so need to wait for Po to catch up to the audience.

Lots of names, as ever in non-Pixar movies (seriously, Pixar advertise their movies as 'where this plot happens', non-Pixar advertise their movies with 'look who we got to do a voice!'), but aside from Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Gary Oldman, the rest is just continued stunt casting from the first film. (Which, to be honest, I don't remember that much of.) And the three leads were fine...ish. Jack cared, Gary went over-the-top as usual, and Angelina seemed to phone it in.

More like 'here's a filler in the series' rather than 'here's an exciting sequel'. We can only hope the inevitable third movie won't crash and burn everything.

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