Hitting the ground running with a beautiful prologue using, I guess you'd call it cut out puppetry.

Thus they establish a mission statement to not try to fix a formula that was never broken while still trying to give it a new sheen.

The most memorable aspect of this movie is its antagonist. Having said that I think they wasted him a little bit. I don't mean that he doesn't get as much air screen time as he deserves, but they show us this amazing, charismatic formidable bad guy with a theatrical edge (wink wink) and he is so badass a part of me sort of wanted to route for him instead. Sadly they decided to commit him to the role of clownish villain when he could have been so much scarier. Again, it's not campiness that dampens it but that he is so blatantly an emotionally damaged character he starts to look pitiful when if they had had more of a feather touch he could have been an intimidating villain while maintaining a complex edge. In practice his motivations just seems abstractly about power but never mind.

His back story is thematically consistent with Po (that's the panda) main problem: this movie is based around that old chestnut of the theme of belonging i.e. wondering who your (birth) parents are. The conclusions this draws are predictable and it can be hard to really relate to how much Po obsesses over biological relation.

But fortunately this does not dominate the picture. You will quite feasibly want to watch this a few times for all the amazing visual detail with intensely impressive martial arts choreography and a sumptuous display of sinitic color. The score is unusually infectious for a Hans Zimmer score and all the laughs you'd expect are there with Jack Black in top form. The interplay of traditional and CGI animation is most effective and when it gets sentimental it almost brought a tear to my eye because they earned it.

We also get to see Po's developing relationship with Tigress and the rest of the Furious get their moments too.