The women’s parenting styles couldn’t be more different.
Directors: Mike Mitchell, Stephanie Ma Stine.
Alice is overly protective of her young son Theo (Eamon O’Connell), who has a peanut allergy, while Celine is relaxed and poised with her boy Max (Baylen D Bielitz).
Released: March 28 (UK & Ireland)
Sixteen years after Jack Black growled his first “Skadoosh!” while demonstrating a perfect Wuxi Finger Hold in the original Kung Fu Panda, dumpling-obsessed hero Po is showing his age. Fur and feathers fly with pleasing regularity in a high-kicking fourth instalment of the computer-animated franchise but the jokes in Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger and Darren Lemke’s script punch disappointingly low and light and a power-hungry villain has to absorb the kung fu moves of previous antagonists to become a palpable threat. Black’s seemingly inexhaustible exuberance from previous instalments is dialled down from 11 to a sensible 7, offering less distraction from a simplistic quest-driven plot that preaches the positivity of change.
A tragic fall from an upstairs balcony robs Celine of her only child and Alice is a guilt-riddled witness to the accident.
Alice senses her best friend blames her for the devastating loss and paranoia poisons the relationship.
Celine requests to spend time with Theo as a coping mechanism, since she is unable to have more children.
The boy’s grandmother Jean (Caroline Lagerfelt) urges quietly worded caution and an increasingly unhinged Alice becomes convinced that Celine intends to seek revenge by killing her precious Theo.
Mothers’ Instinct coolly bides its time, walking a tightrope strung between gnarly suspicion and incontrovertible fact.
“If things stay the same forever, sooner or later they will lose their flavour,” counsels a wise master of noodle broth.
Our distress matches the characters’ and Chastain and Hathaway deliver compelling performances that beg uncomfortable questions about their homemakers’ mental wellbeing and rationality. Delhomme maintains a firm grip on pacing and tone to prevent Alice and Celine’s frosty rivalry from descending entirely into sweeping melodrama.
Sadly, Kung Fu Panda 4 proves its own point.
Mike Mitchell’s picture, co-directed by Stephanie Ma Stine, throws together the same ingredients – frenetic fight sequences, wisecracks, cross-species co-operation – and serves up the blandest dish of the series to date.
There is almost nothing in Po’s latest jaunt to excitedly slurp and savour.
:: NO SWEARING :: NO SEX ::VIOLENCE :: RATING: 7/10
KUNG FU PANDA 4 (UK PG/ROI PG, 94 mins) Animation/ Comedy/Action/Adventure. Featuring the voices of Jack Black, Awkwafina,Viola Davis, Bryan Cranston, James Hong, Dustin Hoffman, Ian McShane, Ke Huy Quan, LoriTan Chinn.
Black’s cover of Britney Spears’…Baby One More Time over the end credits feels like an acknowledgement that filmmakers are going through the motions to boost the franchise’s box office, not because of any dramatic necessity.
mccarthyholden.co.uk | 87
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