KUNG FU PANDA 2
5 out of 5 stars

"stairs...  my ENEMY." - po

even better than the original! dreamworks, you’ve done it again. great work with kung fu panda 2... ;)

po the loveable dragon warrior (voiced perfectly by jack black) is baaaaaack with the furious five, protecting china from evil and darkness. in case you’ve forgotten...the furious five consists of a praying mantis AKA seth rogen, snake AKA lucy liu, monkey AKA jackie chan, crane AKA david cross, and of course, tigress AKA angelina jolie. under the tutelage of master shifu (dustin hoffman), po learns the importance of achieving inner peace, but the peace of china is soon disturbed by the evil lord shen...a handsome yet evil peacock. (voiced perfectly by gary oldman) the story of the peacock is that the peacocks were the ones who invented firecrackers, but their son AKA lord shen had other plans for the invention and wanted to use firecrackers as a source of evil. the soothsayer goat had predicted that lord shen would be defeated by a warrior of black and white, thus lord shen decided to terminate all pandas living in china... thus, we learn the origins of po and how he ended up being raised by a noodle-loving goose. ;)

the story of po is really sweet, and i loved how lord shen and po had interlocking storylines. (not just a good vs. evil plot) 2011 was truly the year for sequels esp. animation movies, and i thought dreamworks did a nice job providing us with a sequel that was more of a prequel this time? i certainly hope how to train your dragon is this way next year! however, the ending of this movie makes me wonder if there’ll be a kung fu panda 3? maybe... if it’s anything like this one, i’d definitely put it on my list to watch it. ;)