Was this Kaufman’s own sublimated desire for a lucrative Hasbro tie-in for his next meta-movie? And the action set pieces where Po storms the maze-like Gongmen city and its octagonal tower did feel labyrinthine-in a very Kaufman way. A piece of inspiration fresh off Kaufman’s yoga mat, perhaps? Also, Po carries around self-reflexive action figures of him and his Furious Five cohorts on his quest to stop an evil, self-loathing peacock named Shen. However, the sequel’s plot is powered by Po’s struggles with self-doubt and search for inner peace after he learns he’s adopted. So which jokes did Charlie pen? Well, there aren’t multiple Malkovich cameos, Po doesn’t consult Robert McKee for screenwriting advice/kung-fu pointers, and he doesn’t hire Tom Wilkinson to erase the memory of an orange-haired pandette (voiced by Kate Winslet). Now a year later, with Kung Fu Panda 2 in theaters this holiday weekend, we can bust out the 3-D shot glasses.
However, when we read that Charlie Kaufman, Hollywood’s premier self-reflexive writer, had done rewrites on Kung Fu Panda 2, we rushed to our laptop to pre-order tickets-and realized we had a year to wait.Identifying any individual voice in the chop suey of re-re-rewritten scripts may be a fool’s errand, but guessing which jokes may have come from Charlie Kaufman’s sui generis imagination would sure make one hell of a drinking game. Po’s transformation into a kung-fu ass-kicker had all the inspirational uplift and acrobatic visual dazzle of a Biggest Loser finale choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping. Jack Black’s carb-pounding panda, Po, with his body-image issues and dreams of Enter the Dragon heroics, added a touching pathos to the sarcastic-talking-animal genre. The original Kung Fu Panda came as a pleasant surprise. Po pile! Courtesy of DreamWorks Animation.
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