Kung Fu Panda Holiday (2010)

I love the kung fu panda franchise for it's great animation, characters, story's, music, acting and comedy/drama. The first movie was great, the second one was awesome, the third was good and the tv show was decent too( tho it has it's faults). This is one of the better holiday specials DreamWorks have put out imo. It's very heart-warming, well animated, has the same actors as the films and they do a good job here, good music and hilarious comedy, plus it's really enjoyable for any kung fu panda fan. Tho it's not perfect due to Bunny being a bit annoying and some jokes don't work well. The story isn't anything ground-breaking either, Overall it's worth watching if you are a Kung Fu Panda fan and it is entertaining.

The annual winter holiday feast is coming fast so Po, as the dragon warrior, must host it perfectly. Although he struggles a lot and does some typical mistakes (for him), everything goes according to plan, but something doesn't feel right. He omitted his dad, his family, and winter holidays are nothing without family. Right? Will he be able to please both parts and deliver a happy ending? What is there to say about this short movie, Kung Fu Panda at Christmas is all you want to see this time of the year, no doubt about that!

Holiday specials are very much hit or miss. Merry Madagascar is remarkably good, the Ice Age special is OK. But this is horrible, but no redeeming features. The story is precisely the sort of crap you expect in the worst such specials --- Po learns a valuable lesson about the importance of family, blah blah --- with absolutely none of the surprise, subversion, or humor that one finds in the better such specials.The animation is likewise derivative, generic, with none of the originality of the movie.Saddest of all was the attempt to pretend that what we are watching is Christmas (as understood by East Coast America --- no snow in LA!) without ever actually saying the word; instead we get vague references to the "Winter Feast".

"Kung Fu Panda Holiday" was released back in 2010 as the second short film to the Panda franchise between the first and second feature film. It's very similar to the original movie, so if you liked that one, chance is good you'll enjoy this one too. The main characters are mostly included and the action is similar too in the grand picture. Here and there some fighting, occasionally some wisdom from Dustin Hoffman and of course quality animation from start to finish.Story-wise I was not really impressed though. The Christmas reference was basically limited to Panda asking himself whether to spend Christmas night with his fellow Kung Fu masters as he's obliged to or with his dear ones. The problem wasn't really that the outcome couldn't be more obvious (that's usually the case with holiday short films), but that the Christmas message got a bit lost in the action sequences and goofy fun parts. Although the ending was executed very nicely, it couldn't really make up for everything before. Maybe they should have limited it to 15 minutes max. It's an okay watch for the holidays and a fine way to reduce the waiting time till the third Kung Fu panda movie in 2015, but that's pretty much it.