There’s always been something pleasingly unfussy about the Kung-Fu Panda franchise. It’s a three-word premise. A panda…does Kung-Fu. Eight years on from the last film – and fifteen since the first – nothing has changed. It’s still about a panda, he still does Kung-Fu. Fine. Funny, too. The premise, that is. There is a niggle, though. Eight years ago, Kung-Fu Panda 3 closed off a well-liked trilogy rather too well for its own good. Four films in and the mileage limitations of a three-word premise are beginning to show. It’s never a great sign when a franchise resorts to raking up past foes to emulate past victories.
There’s a parallel universe out there in which audiences didn’t sleep on Paul Feig’s gender-switched Ghostbusters reboot. Misogyny does not exist on this spectral plane. Inevitably, the female ‘busters would have united with the original gang by now, in some nostalgia porn sequel, but 2021’s Afterlife would never have happened. To think what might have been. Instead, here is Frozen Empire, a fair but largely phoned-in fifth entry in a franchise struggling to proving itself more than the sum of its theme tune. Apologies, fourth entry. In this universe, the powers that be remain keen to pretend 2016 never happened (aren’t we all?). A return to New York here puts the nail in Feig’s coffin.
Now here’s a film that hits the ‘D’ spot. Dildos, double-crossing, decapitation and…dykes? No. Dolls. Judicious executive censoring put pay to the original title. This is the long-awaited Joel-free feature debut of Ethan Coen. Joel broke free of the Coen brand with The Tragedy of Macbeth, now Ethan presents Drive-Away Dolls. It’s a fine enough title but of limited value as a forebear of the debauchery within. Of course, a film’s success is measured less by the size of its silicone penises than what the director does with them. Coen thrusts his front and centre, sex toy and emasculatory symbol alike. The frolics are raucously flippant. Sure, the film desperately wants for tighter and more incisive plotting but we can, at least, rely on Joel for that. Suddenly we see how the pairing adds up.
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