Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) - Watch Full Movie Online [(Original HD)]

Movie Review:
The “Celebrity Wars” comparisons, however facetious, aren’t completely inapt, insofar as DreamWorks Animation once envisioned “Kung Fu Panda” as a six-film cycle. Presuming this Jan. 29 Fox release fits its predecessors at the package office (both gained north of $600 million worldwide) and ratings another much-needed strike on the heels of last year’s unexpectedly lucrative “Home,” it’s safe to believe you will see additional adventures waiting for you for our portly hero, Po (voiced again here by the excellent Jack Black). The commercial imperatives of franchise filmmaking being what they are, it’s futile to point out that “Kung Fu Panda 3” brings Po’s story to such an effective and naturally heartwarming finish that it seems unnecessary to prolong it further; Hollywood, as we know, has long been in the business of the needless.

Happily, under the fluid path of Jennifer Yuh Nelson (who helmed “Kung Fu Panda 2”) and Alessandro Carloni, the new film never seems at risk of dropping under that explanation, pulling us along with an otherworldly prologue occur the eternal Spirit Realm. Last seen vanishing into a vortex of bloom petals in the first “Kung Fu Panda,” the sensible old tortoise Get good at Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) is settling down for a couple centuries of well-earned rest when he’s attacked by his historic frenemy, Kai (J.K. Simmons), a blade-wielding yak that has challenged a large number of kung fu masters and stolen their chi, which he stores in jade amulets and uses to raise a powerful supernatural army. Once he defeats Oogway, Kai harnesses enough power to escape back into the mortal world, where he becomes decided to hunt down the one fated to overthrow him: Po, the Dragon Warrior.

Kai’s campaign of destruction couldn’t come at a worse possible time for Po, who finds himself torn between his adoptive father, the noodle-peddling goose Mr. Ping (James Hong), and his long-lost biological dad, Li (Bryan Cranston), who turns up in the Valley of Peace looking for his missing son. It’s a joyous reunion, and Po, finally coming belly-to-belly with another panda for the first time, feels a powerful longing to be among his own kind. Knowing he must grasp his own chi to truly have a shot at defeating Kai, Po decides to come back with Li to the trick mountain community where people of their types now reside, having used refuge following the horrible panda genocide recounted in the next film. In the meantime, Po’s faithful friends Get good at Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and the Furious Five — aka Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Crane (David Combination) — stay behind to carry down the fort against Kai, though they succumb almost immediately to the warlord’s brutal chi spree.

Whenever issues threaten to carefully turn grave, however, “Kung Fu Panda 3” always has a mood-puncturing quip or sight gag at the ready, a technique that could grate more if its love of life weren’t so buoyant and disarming (a few repetitive yuks aside). The physical comedy becomes downright infectious as Po begins to bond with his new community and soon realizes the vices that made him such an unlikely kung fu grasp are in fact a panda’s natural entitlements: sleeping until noon every day, avoiding almost all forms of exercise, and consuming one’s body weight in dumplings, cookies and noodles. (“I always felt I wasn’t eating up to my full potential!” Po squeals when he realizes chopsticks have merely been slowing him down.) Naturally, too, there’s a short flicker of intimate likelihood in the launch of a relatively aggressively amorous, ribbon-dancing panda called Mei Mei (Kate Hudson, voicing a job once designed for Rebel Wilson), although character is performed mainly for laughs. Not that the Po/Tigress shippers should get too thrilled, given the cool finality with which Jolie’s Tigress identifies Po as “a pal.”

The effectiveness of the “Kung Fu Panda” series is definitely its refusal to take itself or its internal contradictions too seriously. The path to enlightenment, as embodied by the Yoda-like Oogway, is paved with wit and whimsy. Elegant and rough-and-tumble by turns, these are movies that blend the somber mystique of Chinese wuxia epics with the rambunctiousness of old-school chopsocky, plus a dollop of American geek-culture enthusiasm: Po may be the Chosen One, but he’s also a total goofball — a misfit and an underachiever who just so happens to have a prophetic destiny foisted upon him. How he learns to reconcile these different aspects of his personality, including the identity crisis due to his divide parentage, becomes the wealthy thematic core of Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger’s screenplay. There could very well be forget about hackneyed kid-pic moral than the need for finding and thinking in yourself, but “Kung Fu Panda 3” has sufficient conviction and pop gravitas to make even this cliche resonate anew.

It also retains the Asian design flourishes and stylistic adventurousness that distinguished its predecessors, though followers of the series by now will be accustomed to (and perhaps less easily wowed by) its occasional flights into lyrical abstraction. Yuh Nelson and Carloni bring a flowing, tactile beauty to the new movie’s landscapes, which include the pandas’ secluded mountain town and a big farm where Kai phases one of his many dramatic entrances. Much time is spent in the Spirit Realm, a parallel dimensions of infinite space where massive rock formations are forever colliding and breaking apart, adding another element of physical danger to the exciting climactic action sequence. And in perhaps the boldest visible stroke, Kai’s mind-controlled warriors take the proper execution of life-sized jade sentinels, position out relatively incongruously, but strikingly, against the softer-edged backdrops.

Kai himself is voiced with villainous gusto by Simmons, no slouch for the reason that particular department, and Cranston brings a wounded gravitas to the role of Po’s panda dad, his thrill at finding his son obviously tempered by a feeling of the years they’ve lost, and a determination never to lose any longer. The returning tone of voice actors submit their normal top-drawer work despite pretty limited display time, with the welcome exception of Hong’s Mr. Ping, whose fierce love for Po — indicated, as always, through nagging concern that he isn’t getting enough to eat — has long been one of the series’ truest cornerstones. Here, as a squawking defender of the rights of interspecies adoption, he nudges this animal cartoon fantasy ever more endearingly in the direction of the human.