Panda Plan (2024)

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Jackie Chan has long since passed the precipice of a worldwide icon, and the obligatory movie in which famous actors play themselves was bound to come along eventually. But where films like Being John Malkovich (1999)  and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) used this meta-plot narrative to tell reflective and, in the case of the former, groundbreaking additions to the medium, the movie where Jackie Chan adopts a poorly CGI-ed panda is far from either of these things.

Panda Plan is about as trite and tedious as any straight-to-DVD release that feels more like a tax write-off or an egregious payday for a legendary star whose time in the spotlight has long since passed its expiration date.

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As soon as the first scene of Jackie taking on a bunch of ninjas in a church rolled in, I was struck by how lackluster and low-effort everything seemed. Long gone were the days of complex and ingenious ways Jackie would dispatch foes that would make John Wick eat his heart out. From the top, they let you know immediately that this movie required only the minimum amount of effort possible from all involved. This storyline of the tired actor looking for something to bring joy back into his life has been done to death, and honestly, I was beginning to pray for its sweet release ten minutes in.

The other cast of characters, primarily introduced once we arrive at the zoo, also seem to be scattered with daytime children’s program levels of acting. Performances, from David (Xiang Wei) to James (Temur Mamisashvili), are so overdone and hammed up that it’s hard to take any of the stakes the movie presents as serious and washes out the film’s tone. And let’s not forget the abomination of a CGI panda that looks poorly mapped in every frame it shares with a human actor forced to interact with it. Even the film recognizes this, too, as multiple set pieces revolve around the baby panda inside a box or away from view so the audience wouldn’t be assaulted by its badly rendered depiction on screen.

Even still, this visual trickery doesn’t save them as the poorly choreographed fight scenes fused with an aging superstar way past his prime make for a depressing result in man’s battle against time and vanity.

Overall, what Panda Plan has to offer outside of tired cliches so thin I hesitate to call them choices is nothing that hasn’t been done a million times before within a million better formats. I guess we expected better from Jackie Chan, even in his twilight years. With the number of high-quality films for kids available in theaters these days, like The Wild Robot and Transformers One, I can’t in good conscience recommend this film for even the most exasperated parent looking for something to distract their child for a few hours.