Critics reviews

Kung Fu Panda 3 is an impressively polished franchise product, whose spectacular visuals and hit-and-miss jokes mostly distract from the thin story and lengthy repetition of the morals we've heard before. None of the spiritual 'find your real you' lessons, delivered by Dustin Hoffman's red panda and Randall Duk Kim's Yoda tortoise, match the pithy climactic exchange in the original Panda.

Kung Fu Panda 3," in spite of its abundant action—and for all the interspecies mashups, this is as much an action-adventure animated movie as it is a funny-animal animated movie—is a pretty relaxing experience for the adult viewer. The colors are beautiful, the design of the varied realms is ingenious and pleasing, the animation fluid and graceful. This panda doesn't pander—there are scant, if any, nudging pop-culture references soliciting laughter from knowing grown-ups.

With the latest Kung Fu Panda movie, DreamWorks Animation's house visual style enters its flowery rococo stage, blooming into intensified colors, multi-panel split-screens, and smatterings of traditional animation. But though the rubbery DreamWorks look has gotten a lot more idiosyncratic and artistically ambitious since the days of Bee Movie and Shark Tale, the studio remains addicted to the formulae and be-your-self-isms of generic kiddie fare.

Like its predecessors (from 2008 and 2011), this third Panda is a blowout of resplendent, lustrous color. Of course, the charm and liveliness of the story count for something too, and this third installment measures up.

Where [How to Train Your Dragon 2] often seemed to suffer from uneven pacing, back-loading its action, as many animated adventure films seem to, in a chaotic and lengthy climax, Kung Fu Panda 3 continues to find a kind of balance and a benefit in its genre affiliation, evenly distributing its action throughout in quick bursts of fluidly animated fight choreography.