Po Ping, the greedy giant panda and master of kung fu played in his original English-speaking version by the voice of Jack Black, has a sense of timing : eight years after its last appearance on the big screen, it resurfaces in the middle of school break to offer young people and their parents an hour and a half of entertainment that will not disappoint fans of the series.
Director Mike Mitchell breathes new life into this production, although here on a reduced budget: 85 million US dollars, or 60 million less than the previous part. And it appears on the screen, we must admit: the images are less spectacular. The production has taken it easy on the special effects, bringing the franchise back to the essence of the cartoon (but by computer all the same), its Disney characters, the settings still rich in relief and color of the Valley of the Peace, this fantastic reproduction of ancient China.
The film opens with the unexpected return of an old adversary who was believed to have been exiled to another dimension. Now elevated to the rank of master of kung fu and holder of the Staff of Wisdom, a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds, Po must now designate his successor as dragon warrior in order to move on to the ultimate stage of his evolution: spiritual master. However, the arrival in the village of the vixen Zhen, a seasoned thief, will delay her retirement from kung fu; she will inform him of the plans of the witch named Le Chameleon, who aims to conquer the Valley of Peace.
Po and Zhen intend to stand in his way in this story about friendship and loyalty. The duo then sets off on a mission to their temple, perched on the top of the mountain overlooking Juniper City, a teeming city, bustling and inhabited in its depths by a community of thieves, where the vixen comes from, an orphan like Po. The story unravels along the way, but the succession of combat scenes and good old visual gags quickly makes us forget the shortcomings of the scenario: during the first half of the film, we laugh while admiring the panda’s combat techniques, always as obsessed with dumplings and other delights of Chinese gastronomy.
Thus, the frugality of the technological means used to design this fourth chapter in no way spoils our pleasure of seeing the menagerie in its Valley of Peace as the pace with which this new story is told keeps us in suspense. But the greatest economy found for this production is perhaps the one which allows Mitchell to avoid the redundancy which was beginning to run out of steam for the franchise: after three films in which Po’s acolytes enter the scene – the Five Cyclones (Furious Five) – , the screenwriters (Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, back) sent them to follow other adventures, finding a new traveling companion for the panda (Zhen, the voice of Awkwafina) and ensuring the economy of the fees paid to the prestigious voices of the said Cyclones (those of Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan and Seth Rogen, among others).
This breaks the old comic reflexes established in previous episodes, regularly evoked by winks – like this simple gesture of Master Shifu (the voice of Dustin Hoffman) who manages to make a bonsai bloom, a reference to the first chapter of the franchise —, and allows Po’s two dads to be involved in the adventure, Li Shan (biological father) and the goose-restaurateur Mr. Ping (his adoptive father).