It gets weird: In one fever dream sequence, Po imagines being bludgeoned and beaten by a radish his parents love more than their own son: What, he wonders, if they traded up? What if they loved the radish more than they loved him?
His search instigates traumatic memories, beginning with the day he was abandoned in a radish crate outside the goose’s noodle shop. You see, like Steve Martin in The Jerk, goofy Po is shocked to find that the animal he presumed to be his father, a goose, is not, in fact, his genetic parent. Po’s Kung Fu instructor informs him he needs to find inner peace, which entails finding his real parents. The new film begins where the first left off: Having saved the land, Po is a celebrity, the biggest thing to happen to his species since YouTube uploaded “Sneezing Baby Panda.” And fame, of course, is not enough. Befitting such a gluttonous hero, this spazzy sequel delivers more heaping servings of the same.
The first film also had the advantage of being good, goofy, fun: With Tex Avery–inspired, bouncy-ball animation, Po, the blubbery, roundhousing hero, ricocheted across the screen from one speedy slapstick sequence to the next, assisted enormously by the elastic voice of exaggerated eyebrow-archer Jack Black. The runaway hit Kung Fu Panda delivered on its market-savvy premise: a cute, cuddly bear for girls, martial arts for boys, and enough of a dim-sum sampler of Chinese references to make it a record-breaking smash in China.
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