Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)

(In French, Video on-Demand, September 2016) I wish I had something insightful or interesting to say about Kung Fu Panda 3, but as it turns out the third instalment of this series doesn’t feel any different from the first two ones. Here, once again, we have our Panda hero getting a bit better, inspiring others and vanquishing a terrible danger. Fat jokes included. But I’ve never been able to warm up to the mildly annoying protagonist of the series, and I don’t find its central world building to be all that interesting. None are bad movies—they just don’t happen to catch my interest. Whatever nice things I have to say about Kung Fu Panda 3 aren’t particularly specific to the film itself: The animation is often beautiful (especially those set in the Spirit Realm), the individual gags often succeed and the pacing is fast enough that there isn’t much time to be bored. The kids will like it, and that’s pretty much the bottom line for any contemporary computer-animated films. I’m not particularly interested in a fourth instalment in the series, but I’ll probably watch it when it’s available. Sometimes I wonder if I should just wait until I’m in a better mood, watch the entire series back-to-back and see if my opinion of it improves.