Review of Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) by Shiira — 20 Jun 2011

Tigress looks away, out of embarrassment and understanding, when she sees a miniaturized replica of herself, an action figure that the goose mistakenly believes his son had left behind while packing for Gongmen City.

Knowing chuckles from her teammates break out. Just because a stark-raving mad **** with a genocidal streak is threatening to blow up all of China to kingdom come, it doesn't mean that the Furious Five can't poke fun at their exceedingly uptight friend, for levity's sake.

True enough, Lord Shen means serious business. The cannon that he developed could be curtains for kung fu, but how can they not laugh at the appearance of the Tigress doll, and what it signifies to a panda bear who is old enough to breed, yet can't do anything about it, since he's the last of his species, purportedly? The Viper is also female, but even though interspecies love can and does occur with relative frequency, the tigress, with her mammalian(as opposed to reptilian) charms, probably wins by default.

Mr. Ping, just like any parent of a teenager, is worried about his son's sex drive, so maybe it's actually a calculated move on the father's part to infantilize Po, therefore making him less attractive as a potential mating partner.

In "Kung Fu Panda", the goose seems well-aware of his son's fantasy life. Sounding more like a henpecking mother than a father, the bird asks loudly, "What are you doing up there?" from the kitchen in their humble abode, when he hears suspicious noises emanating from the bear's room.

The sound that piques his imagination is that of a prostrated panda with major weight issues, struggling to get up from the floor. From this most humbling of beginnings, things turn around real fast for this morbidly obese bear.

Other than being a tribute to the "wuxia" genre, "Kung Fu Panda" may be the most inspirational movie about big people since "Angus". Later on in the first film, the battle of the bulge, a losing battle, the result of a gluttonous appetite, greatly undermines Po's ability to fulfill his destiny as the Dragon Warrior, as he eats Shi Fu out of house and home while training at the vaunted academy under his tutelage.

Unfairly, the Furious Five take issue with the fact that their savior, the chosen one who will lead them into battle with Tai Lung, can't fight, let alone, get an unobstructed view of his toes. So prejudicial are their feelings toward Po's perceived weight problem, this insular group talks freely about their leader while he's within earshot, not realizing that to another panda bear, or a pack, Po is the right size.

"Kung Fu Panda 2", however, delves into the backstory as to how a goose ended up raising a bear, and in the process, shows us that Po's ungainly weight problem is a matter of nurture, not nature.

When Ping discovers the panda cub mixed-up with the radish delivery outside his noodle shop, the restauranter overfeeds Po, because, in all likelihood, he was fattening the bear up. The iconography is straight out of "Hansel & Gretel".

As he eats, Po sits in a pot, the prelude to a date with the oven. In "Kung Fu Panda"(starring Jack Black, the David Carradine of "yellow-voice"), when Ping tells his son that the secret ingredient is "nothing", he's lying.

The secret ingredient is animals. "Broth runs deep in our veins," he says, meaning blood. Unbeknownst to Po, the goose makes him complicit to the enterprise of meat. It's as if Orwell wrote the script for "Soylent Green".

Upon hearing this startling revelation, Po, in return, cracks the riddle of the sacred scroll, which enigmatically, turns out to be blank. Likewise, nothing. That is how the evil snow leopard interprets the document, reflecting as it does his own image of himself, which also denotes the attitude of the goose towards the furry creatures who inhabit the Valley of Peace, panda included.

The sequel reminds us that Po belongs to the ethnography of animals, not bears, so he is fat, as defined by mainstream cultural norms. Lucky for this lowland community, the dragon warrior misinterprets his father, and fulfills his destiny.

In the sequel, Ping adds tofu to the menu, whereas in the original film, he dismisses the very idea. Now that the goose uses Po's celebrity to promote the noodle shop, he can afford to go vegetarian. Po is still fat by non-panda bear standards, but the cachet of being the dragon warrior more than offsets those extra unsightly pounds.

On the boat, on the heels of being humiliated in front of the tigress, the fairer Bengal finds Po struggling with inner peace, as he bangs his head against the mast. She tells him, "The mast is not a worthy opponent," then offers him her open palm.

"I'm ready," the tigress says(read: romantic love is better than self-love). But a scared Po replies, "I think I prefer the mast." After he takes down the ****, however, it's the tigress's turn to be shy.

During some kung fu hugging, her body stiffens.