Po (voice by Jack Black), that Panda Bear who knows kung fu is back.

After finding fame as a Dragon Warrior and defending the Valley of Peace from numerous threats, he’s been told by his master, Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), that it is time for him to give up being the Dragon Warrior and move on to becoming the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace.  Po doesn’t really want to do that so, after being passive aggressive about auditioning replacements, Po goes on a quest with a plucky corsac fox and thief named Zhen (voiced by Awkwafina).  Together, they head out to defeat a new threat, the Chameleon (voice of Viola Davis).  The Chameleon is summoning past villains from the Spirit Real and stealing their kung fu powers.

Meanwhile, Po’s two dads — one biological (voiced by Bryan Cranston) and the other a goose who adopted Poe when he was young (voiced by James Hong) — also set out on a quest to try to keep Poe from getting into trouble.  It’s actually kind of sweet, even if I did have a hard time telling all the various Panda Bears apart.  Actually, so did everyone else in the movie so at least I felt a little bit less dumb.

Kung Fu Panda 4 is a typical Dreamworks animated film.  The characters are cute and kid-friendly.  The humor is self-referential and occasionally, an adult joke will slip in  but it’s never anything that would threaten the film’s G-rating.  The plot is pretty predictable and by-the-numbers but then again, this is a Kung Fu Panda film that we’re talking about here.  There’s only so much that you can do with that.  That said, the animation is nicely done and the voice actors all do a good job of bringing their characters to life.  I especially liked Dustin Hoffman as Master Shifu.  It’s an entertaining movie, even if it does ultimately feel a bit generic.

The release of a new animated film, even one as low-key as Kung Fu Panda 4, used to be a huge event.  Now, we kind of take animated films and their star-studded casts for granted.  It’s a bit of a shame that we’ve lost that excitement.