Actually better than expected

Rating: 7/10 (2 July 2011)

My partner and I took his teenaged sister and her boyfriend to the cinema, and when she chose Kung Fu Panda 2 the only upside - from my point of view - was that she hadn't chosen Bad Teacher.
The first thing to say is that you do need to have seen the original King Fu Panda, and you need to have paid more attention than I apparently did because I spent the first twenty minutes going "...what?". But, rather unexpectedly, it IS good fun. Shen - the new baddie, voiced by Gary Oldman, is well-developed and pleasantly sinister (particularly considering he's a damn peacock - who'd've thought?), and the back-story that's gradually presented tying him and Po together is surprisingly dark for a kids' film. It sounds like a trivial point, but I also enjoyed the styling of the flash-backs and narrative sequences too. The other Kung Fu warriors have become sidelined slightly which is a shame, but Mr Ping comes into his own and the little sub-plot about Po's adoption is actually rather sweet.
It's not brilliant, but it's engaging and funny in places. Your kids'll enjoy it, and you;ll probably be mildly entertained too.