Review: Kungfu Panda 2

Kungfu Panda 2 is the sequel to Kungfu Panda, released in 2008. It tells the story of Po, a panda bear adopted a goose Mr. Ping has become the Dragon Warrior and is now able to join The Furious Five - Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey. He, together The Furious Five were tasked to protect the peace in Valley of Peace.

However, a not-so-new enemy came into the life of Po, as he is enjoying his newly found status as the Dragon Warrior. Lord Shen, an heir of the peacock clan who once ruled Gongmen City has schemed a grand scale plan of ruling the whole of China through harnessing the power of fireworks. For him to carry out this grand scheme of a plan, Lord Shen has enlisted a pack of bandit wolves whom he assigned to steal all the available refined metal they could find.

In fighting those bandit wolves from stealing those refined metal, Po had a flashback of his life as a very young panda with his biological parents. Lord Shen was in the bid of becoming the most powerful ruler in China, and in the process of doing so, he seek to annihilate all the living pandas in the land but Po's biological father somehow survived the annihilation where Po's biological mother was killed in the bid to save him.

Thus, Po while fighting to save the Furious Five who have been captured by Lord Shen had to learn the hard way of achieving the inner peace of coming to terms with his past. He was fortunate enough to learn to achieve this inner peace from the soothsayer who has been coincidentally exiled to the village where Po was born as Lord Shen had blasted Po out to this village in a particularly ferocious battle. And indeed he did earnestly learned how to achieve the inner peace crucial for him to defeat Lord Shen in the finalé of all battles.

Kungfu Panda 2 is one of those very few movie sequels that has captured the audience's imagination better than the first one. Not to say that Kungfu Panda is not worth mentioning, but I guess the sequel this time has outshone it not only in terms of box office collections but also has a more interesting story line. In fact, Kungfu Panda 2 can be a stand alone movie in its own right, thus. for those audience who have not or did not watch Kungfu Panda would not have missed out much of the story, except maybe for as to how Po achieved his status as the Dragon Warrior.

Dreamworks Animation definitely did an excellent job in creating the story of Kungfu Panda and Kungfu Panda 2. The stellar voice-over casts caps the icing on the cake. Kungfu Panda 2 is packed chock-a-block with actions and laughs at the right places that would hold you spellbound througout the movie. 

Although we are in the technologically advanced age where sci-fi and fantasies rule the silver screen, nothing really beats an original story that tells the story of a long-lost time when once the human race used to live. And Kungfu Panda 2 has it all, although the characters were in the form of animals. I highly recommend this movie to all people who are in for good laughs and also for those with kids because the story has also incorporated universal values where children and adults could learn from in a fun way.