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.
Unfrosted is a thoroughly amiable and goofy comedy about the invention of the Pop Tart.
Taking place in an imaginary 1963, Unfrosted tells the story of the Cereal Wars. Kellog’s and Post are competing for dominance in the kids breakfast food market, dominating the scene while the dour folks at Quaker can only shake their heads in holier-than-thou shame. Bob Cabana (played by the film’s director, Jerry Seinfeld) is a Kellog’s exec who spends his day dealing with pompous cereal mascots (led by a hilarious Hugh Grant) and the somewhat random whims of his boss, Edsel Kellog III (Jim Gaffigan). He dreams of someday having a lawn made out of sod and also having enough money to send his kids to a good college. “Those colleges can cost $200 a year!” he says, at one point.
Life is good until he discovers that Post — headed up by Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer) — is developing a type of new breakfast food that could revolutionize the industry and dethrone Kellog’s as America’s top cereal company. Bob gets Edsel’s permission to try to create something that will beat Post’s new product to the shelves. But first, Bob has to go to NASA and convince brilliant engineer Donna “Stan” Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy) to abandon the moon project and return to Kellog’s. “You know we’re never going to land on the moon,” Bob tells her.
Soon, the entire nation is riveted by the competition between Post and Kellog’s. Walter Cronkite (Kyle Dunnigan) reports on every development, in between complaining about his wife and playing with silly putty. The Russians decide to help Post, leading the world to the brink of nuclear war while President Kennedy (Bill Burr) spends his time with the Doublemint Twins. Harry Friendly (Peter Dinklage), head of the milk syndicate, warns that kids better not stop eating cereal while Bob finds himself being menaced by a sinister milkman (Christian Slater). A German scientist (Thomas Lennon) and Chef Boyardee (Bobby Moynihan) combine a sea monkey with a square of ravioli, leading to a new life form that lives in the Kellog’s ventilation system. Steve Schwinn (Jack McBrayer), the bicycle guy, risks his life to test a prototype while a super computer is shipped to Vietnam and turns into Colonel Kurtz and….
Okay, you’re getting the idea. This is a silly, joke-a-minute film that is in no way meant to be taken seriously. It’s obvious that Seinfeld and his co-writers greatly amused themselves while writing the script and your amusement will depend on whether or not you’re on the same wavelength. I enjoyed the film, because I love history and I love pop culture and I like random homages to other films. Not all of the jokes landed. There’s a lengthy Mad Men parody that, while funny, still feels several years too late. But, for the most part, I enjoyed the amiable goofiness of it all.
Unfrosted is currently getting some savagely negative reviews but that has more to do with Seinfeld’s recent comment that the “extreme left” was ruining comedy. Though most people would probably consider Seinfeld’s comment to be common sense (and would also realize that Seinfeld was condemning the “extreme” as opposed to liberalism in general), the online folks, many of whom were already angry over Seinfeld’s outspoken support of Israel, were scandalized and most mainstream film reviewers today never want to get on the bad side of an online mob, regardless of how annoying that mob may be. (Even a positive review in TheHollywood Reporter contained an odd passage in which the reviewer seemed to beg forgiveness for giving a non-condemnatory review to a film made by someone on the other side.) Of course, there are also some reviewers who are currently overpraising this film as a way to “own the libs.” The fact that a film as silly and inoffensive as this one could suddenly find itself at the center of the culture war tends to prove Seinfeld’s point.
The important thing is that Unfrosted is amusing and, in the end, rather likable. I enjoyed it.
Gemma (Allison Williams) is a roboticist who works for America’s most successful Seattle-based toy company, Funki. Funki is the company behind the Purrpetual Pets, the really annoying Furby rip-offs that every child wants to have. Gemma has developed a child-sized humanoid robot that she calls M3GAN. She thinks that it could be the new big toy but her boss, David (Ronny Chieng), disagrees. David says to stick with what works and develop a new Purrpetual Pet.
While Gemma is trying not to lose her job, she also has to deal with a new arrival in her home. Following the tragic deaths of her parents and the destruction of her Purrpetual Pet, Gemma’s eight year-old niece moves in with her. From the minute that Cady (Violet McGraw) shows up, things are awkward. Gemma is more comfortable dealing with technology than with other humans. When Cady attempts to play with a toy on Gemma’s bookshelf, Gemma quickly explains that it’s not a toy. “It’s a collectible.” In fact, it’s not until Gemma introduces Cady to M3GAN (played by Amie Donald with Jenna Davis providing her voice) that Cady finally starts to become comfortable in her new home. M3GAN is the friend, older sister, and maternal figure that Cady is desperately looking for. And even though Gemma knows that M3GAN is still being developed and could possibly malfunction, Gemma is kind of happy that Cady finally has someone other than Gemma to look after her.
And, of course, M3Gan is happy too. M3GAN proves to not only be a quick learner but she also takes her duty to look after Cady very seriously. When the neighbor’s dog bites Cady, the dog vanishes shortly afterward. When the neighbor suggests that either Cady or Gemma had something to do with the dog’s disappearance, the neighbor ends up getting attacked in her garage. When a bully tries to push Cady around before then attacking M3GAN, M3GAN reacts by ripping off his ear. It may seem like it’s good to have M3GAN on your side but what about when M3GAN decides that Gemma isn’t doing a good enough job raising Cady? What about when M3GAN herself starts to suspect that Cady needs to be disciplined?
M3GAN came out in January and it was, to the surprise of many, the first big critical and commercial success of 2023. Some of that, of course, is because there really wasn’t much competition back in January. Audiences that didn’t want to rewatch the Avataror Black Panther sequels really didn’t have many other options other than M3GAN and Plane.
That said, M3GAN is an undeniably effective mix of satire and horror. It works precisely because it captures what we all secretly fear, that AI is eventually going to kill us. M3GAN may look adorable and she gets to show off some pretty good dance moves towards the end of the film but she’ll kill anyone who gets on her nerves and, as both Gemma and Cady find out, it’s pretty much impossible to turn her off. It’s not just that M3GAN replaces Gemma as Cady’s primary caregiver. It’s that the viewer knows that it’s totally possible that there’s an army of M3GANs out there, waiting to replace all of us. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, at least 50% of the reviewers over on Rotten Tomatoes will actually be advanced AIs, programmed to overpraise studio productions while only giving negative reviews to films that don’t necessarily need good reviews to sell tickets.
M3GAN works as both a satire and a horror flick. The movie opens with a macabre Purrpetual Pet commercial that’s cringey specifically because it feels so accurate. As brought to life by Amie Donald and Jenna Davis, M3GAN is a wonderfully creepy character who is occasionally made sympathetic by the fact that, much like HAL in 2001 and the robots in Creation of the Humanoids, M3GAN seems to have more genuine feelings than the humans around her. Indeed, with the exception of Violet McGraw’s Cady, there are no sympathetic human characters. Gemma, for instance, is a very familiar type, someone who knows how to write code but who has no idea how to relate to anyone on an actual emotional level. In many ways, her relationship with Cady is just as a manipulative and destructive as M3GAN’s.
M3GAN is a strong movie up until the final 20 minutes, when M3GAN suddenly starts to target people who she really doesn’t have any reason to go after. But, overall, it’s an effective look at the future that we may have waiting for us.
It looks like Malignant writers James Wan and Akela Cooper have reunited to give us M3gan, the story of a robot that may be more than she appears. When a young girl (Violet McGraw, Doctor Sleep) loses her parents, she moves in with her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams, Get Out), who introduces her to M3gan, her latest project. When Gemma assigns M3gan to protect her niece, it looks like things are going to escalate a bit.
Gerard Johnstone (The New Legends of Monkey) is handling the direction for M3gan. Wan is producing with Jason Blum (Blumhouse Productions), and Allison Williams is an Executive Producer.
Actor Simu Liu (Meeting Mommy) dropped some teaser images from Entertainment Weekly for Marvel’s upcoming Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, where he plays the lead. As I’m unfamiliar with the character, I found myself where I always go for information on Marvel Characters – my hardcover version of The Marvel Encyclopedia.
According to the Encyclopedia, Shang-Chi premiered in Special Marvel Edition #15 back in 1973, and while that version of the character didn’t have any superpowers, the trailer suggests this may be a little different. After all, he was also given an Ultimates treatment (where many Marvel characters were brought up to date with new stories and even new origin variants).
Shang-Chi also stars Awkafina (Jumanji: The Next Level), Michelle Yeoh (Crazy Rich Asians), Ronny Chieng (Bliss) and Tony Leung (Hero, Hard Boiled), who is trying to pull Shang-Chi back to a world he’s walked away from. Murmurs across the internet say that Leung’s character is tied to the Mandarin (or is the True Mandarin instead of Ben Kingsley’s fake one in Iron Man 3) We’ll have to wait and see. The fighting action looks great so far.
Marvel Studios is pushing for a September 3rd release. Whether that is on Disney Plus and in Theatres remains to be seen.
Through the Shattered Lens 