Whenever you search the term "mockbuster" online, you are guaranteed to see numerous blog posts, countless YouTube reviews, and a myriad of meme reviews of the notorious Video Brinquedo and Spark Plug Entertainment's animated rip-offs. And for good reason. All of their movies have bland plots, insipid writing, ridiculous animation, and above all repulsive art-styles that immediately turn you away from them.
Then there's Chop Kick Panda. People are almost eager to lump it in with the likes of Ratatoing, A Car's Life, and Plan Bee. Just look at all of the reviews and reaction videos about this being a super-bad and abysmal movie. Others may have been introduced to this by I Hate Everything's "Not DreamWorks Collection" video, where it was decided that it was just a super-mediocre Flash cartoon instead. Whether you just watched videos of some YouTuber ranting about it or hate-watched it yourself, you'll probably come to the conclusion that this is just a so-so children's comedy similar to Johnny Test or something, complete with lazy animation and banal writing.
Thing is, Chop Kick Panda isn't any of these things. In fact, the writing is closer to an episode of Animaniacs or Rocky and Bullwinkle than anything else. So why all the hyperbolic hate or exasperated sighs? I have a theory, but I'll present it after the review.
STORY & WRITING:
The story of the movie is unsurprisingly simple and admittedly derivative of Kung Fu Panda (Renegade Animation was contracted by Gaiam to create a mockbuster, after all), with an incompetent panda wanting to prove himself as a mighty warrior in addition to a macguffin with supposedly limitless power and a blank document. Getting past that, however, is all just superficial similarities. It's a basic "dad lies to his son because he's embarrassed of his job, but ends up proving himself in the end" sort of deal. And you know what? It works.
People may be disappointed that the movie doesn't even attempt at having a grander story but at the end of a day, it's a comedy movie and most comedies intentionally have simple plots so they can focus on the jokes. And as luck would have it, the humor is this movie's best asset.
If I had to describe this movie's comedy, I'd say it's very reminiscent of a Jay Ward cartoon; a lot of quick wordplay, snarky dialogue, and in general having a self-aware, witty tone to it. This is primarily seen through the characters Bali and Slade, who have some great scenes together where the latter is trying his damndest to work with the former's brand of navel-gazing stupidity, but truthfully almost every scene has some gems ("Shouldn't you be in the gifted class?"). Still, Bali alone just might have one of the best jokes in the entire movie: "Why'd I ever leave jolly old England? The pubs, the royal palaces, the White Cliffs of Dover... the pubs."
One criticism I do have, though, is that the movie gets very exposition-heavy towards the middle, which slows things down significantly. Though the same smart writing is present throughout the movie, the middle is pretty boring because Zibo is honestly not that strong of a protagonist to carry it alone. I do have to commend the movie for being oddly cultured, though. It actually pronounces the word "karate" correctly and made me aware of the different names for rock-paper-scissors worldwide.
ANIMATION:
The animation itself isn't half-bad, using some decent tweening and effective poses that, while looking a bit stiff at times, is still visually-fit enough to be an actual TV show. It's certainly above Johnny Test. My problem is with the art-style which looks flat, sterile, and a little too bland for my liking.
While the character designs themselves are fine, the style they are animated in makes the movie look too generic to stand out from a visual perspective and may actually contribute to the "boring" moniker that people often ascribe to it. The backgrounds, however, work in their simplicity and are really charming to look at. I just think it would be better if they were contrasted with black outlines around the characters, instead of them both being flat.
Conclusion:
So to wrap this up, I'll answer the question: "If you think Chop Kick Panda is actually a good movie, reminiscent of animated comedies people typically really like, why are there so many videos trashing it or calling it 'painfully mediocre'?" If I had to guess, it's because, to most of the people making these critique videos, the worse the quality of the movie, the more enjoyment they get out of it.
After all, they're not watching Chop Kick Panda to assess its quality, its quality is already assumed to be very bad and they're just there to riff on it. So when they go into the movie and realize that it's trying actually be good, they have to work with attempting to mock some actually clever jokes, harping on some of the duds, or just making fun of the animation because these reviews need to fill 30 minutes somehow.
However, if you look past all of that, you'll find a pretty good animated comedy on your hands. It may not be the best of the best, but hey, Renegade Animation has two other surprisingly-good mockbusters to look out for and they've much improved on the formula Chop Kick Panda laid out for them.
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