In his first film, Po, the clumsy, computer-animated panda voiced by Jack Black, achieved his destiny, becoming the unlikely Dragon Warrior, protecting the Valley of Peace alongside his anthropomorphized animal friends and fellow kung fu masters, the Furious Five (Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, and Jackie Chan). The original cast is back, but is there anything left to the story? Other than some trumped-up daddy issues, no. (Here's a shocker: Po's pop — a duck — isn't his real father.) That plus a new villain in the form of a deadly peacock, Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), who plans on destroying kung fu. Jennifer Yuh Nelson has helmed a handsome film; yet like many a sequel before it, Kung Fu Panda 2 doesn't offer much that's new, other than its ticket-price-inflating use of 3D. Skip the surcharge: some of the movie's most arresting images were created in glorious flat 2D.
